Prof. Dr. Timothy Nunan

Academic Positions

Academic Training

Research Interests

• History of the Soviet Union in a global context; socialist internationalism; Soviet development aid in the Global South; Communist movements in the Global South
• History of Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Iran
• Entanglements between the post-socialist world and the Islamic world
• Imperial entanglements in 19th and 20th century Eurasia: Russian Empire/USSR, Ottoman Empire, Iran, China, Japan
• History of the Cold War in a global context
• History of the spread and reception of revolutionary ideologies: Communism, Islamism, Maoism
• World order politics and the history of international order; alternative international orders (Communism, Pan-Islamism, the Non-Aligned Movement, the New International Economic Order)
• History of international development
• International political economy; global monetary policy

Monographs

Believing Globally: Islamist Internationalism Between the Cold War and Decolonization (Columbia University Press, forthcoming)

Humanitarian Invasion: Global Development in Cold War Afghanistan. Cambridge UP, 2016.

Edited Translations

Carl Schmitt, Writings on War. Polity, 2011.

Selected Articles

“Doomed to Good Relations: The Soviet Union, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Fate of Anti-Imperialism in the 1980s.” The Journal of Cold War Studies, Winter 2022.

“Asymmetries of Internationalism: Performing and Remembering Subnational Internationalism in the Age of Developed Socialism.” The Russian Review, vol. 80, no. 4, Sept. 2021.

“‘Neither East Nor West,’ Neither Liberal Nor Illiberal? Iranian Islamist Internationalism in the 1980s.” Journal of World History, vol. 31, no. 1, 2020.

“From Land Reform to Veterinarians Without Borders in Cold War Afghanistan,” Comparativ 27:2, 2017.

“The Violence Curtain: Occupied Afghan Turkestan and the Making of a Central Asian Borderscape,” Transcultural Studies 1, 2017.

“An Empire Reframed: Sovinformbiuro, Postwar Soviet Photography and Visual Orders in Soviet Central Asia,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 17:3, Summer 2016.

“Ecologies of Socialism: Soviet Gradostroitel’stvo and Late Soviet Socialism,” Journal of Eurasian Studies 3:2, July 2012.

“Getting Re-Acquainted with the ‘Muslims of the USSR’: Staging Soviet Islam in the Muslim World, 1978-1982,” Ab Imperio 4, 2011.

“Under a Red Veil: Staging Afghan Emancipation in Moscow,” The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 38:1, 2011.

“Soviet Nationalities Policy, USSR in Construction, and Soviet Documentary Photography in Comparative Context, 1931-1937,” Ab Imperio 2, 2010.

Chapters in Books and Edited Volumes

“Chinas iranische Revolution: Iranische Sozialisten, die Volksrepublik China und Süd-Süd-Beziehungen.” Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung, Lorenz Lüthi und Felix Wemheuer, Eds. (forthcoming).

“Islam and the Cold War.” The Cambridge Companion to the Cold War in the Middle East and North Africa, Cyrus Schayegh, ed., Cambridge UP (forthcoming)

“Persian Visions of Nationalism and Inter-Nationalism in a World at War.” Beyond Versailles: Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and the Formation of New Polities After the Great War, Marcus Payk und Roberta Pergher, eds., Indiana UP, 2019.

“The Soviet Elphinstone: Colonial Pasts, Post-Colonial Presents, and Socialist Futures in the Soviet Reception of British Orientalism.” Mountstuart Elphinstone in South Asia: Pioneer of British Colonial Rule, Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, eds., Hurst, 2018.

“Graveyard of Development? Development in Cold War Afghanistan.” The Development Century, Erez Manela und Stephen Macekura, eds., Cambridge UP, 2018.

Summer Semester 2025

• Decolonization and the End of European Empires
• The Global Cold War
• Global History: Methods, Approaches, Sources
• Intellectuals and Decolonization
• Topics in Intellectual History: Malcolm X

Winter Semester 2024/25

• American Conservatism: Intellectuals, Movements, Institutions
• Central Asia from Independence to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, 1991-2022
• The Iranian Revolution: A Global History
• What Is American Conservatism?

Summer Semester 2024

• The 1970s
• The Cold War: A Global History
• Regional Histories of the Cold War: Europe, Asia, the Middle East
• Russia's Wars
• Tips, Tricks and Hacks: How to Design, Write and Revise a Research Project in the Humanities and Area Studies

Winter Semester 2023/24

• History Lab: Mit digitalen Archiven forschen und wissenschaftliche Kurzvideos produzieren am Beispiel der digitalisierten Archive des V?lkerbundes
• Trauma and Cultural Production in Post-Conflict Societies: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon

Summer Semester 2023

• The Cold War: A Global History
• Colonization and Decolonization in Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe and Eurasia
• Hannah Arendt 

Winter Semester 2022/23

• Research Colloquium for Transregional History
• Afghanistan and the Great Powers
• Transregional Eurasia, 1850s-Present

• 2021 Interview on the history of Afghanistan, American Prestige Podcast
• 2021 Interview on the history of Afghanistan, The Peel Podcast, 08.10.2021
• 2021 Interview on the elections in Germany, American Prestige Podcast, 27.09.2021
• 2021 Interview on the history of the USSR in Afghanistan, The Slavic Connexion Podcast, 24.09.2021 
• 2021 Interview on the history of Afghanistan, Counterpoint Podcast with Amanda Vanstone (Australia), 13. 09.2021
• 2021 Interview on the history of Afghanistan, Politics, Theory, Other Podcast, 03.09.2021
• 2021 Interview on the history of Afghanistan, Himal Southasian magazine (Colombo, Sri Lanka), 31.08.2021
• 2021 Interview on the history of Afghanistan, ?1 Europa Journal, ?RF, 30.08.2021
• 2021 Article on the history of development aid in Afghanistan, Noema magazine (Los Angeles, USA), 24.08.2021

 

Committee Work and Academic Offices

Internationalization Officer of the Faculty PKGG (2022-)

Reviewer Activity:

Ab Imperio; American Councils; American Political Science Review; Cambridge University Press; Central Asian Survey; Columbia University Press; Cornell Universitz Press; European Commission Research Executive Agency; European Research Council; Indiana University Press; International History Review; Journal of Cold War Studies; Journal of Global History; Kritika; Oxford University Press; Stanford University Press; Routledge

Lectures and Conferences

Recent Talks and Lectures

• “Islam and the Cold War,” Pierre du Bois Conference, Geneva Graduate Institute, 21.01.2025
• “The Shi'a Islamist Discovery of the Third World, 1960s-1980s,” University of California, Berkeley, 24.02.2024
• “From the ‘Imam of Atheism’ to ‘Orthodox Iran’: Russia and Shi'a Islamist Movements, 1970s - Present,” Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, University of Michigan, USA 13.09.2023
• “Lighting a Candle for Khomeini: How the Human Rights Movement Transformed the Islamic Movement in the Long 1970s,” University of Connecticut, USA 14.04.2022
• “Iranian Islamist Internationalism and Histories of the Cold War,” The PostCold War Middle East: Iran, Iraq and International Politics in the 1980s, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 06.05.2021
• “Iran's Soviet-Afghan War: Revolutions, Diasporas, Diplomacy, 1970s-1990s,” International History Forum, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland, 15.12.2020 

Conferences and Workshops Organized

• “Reform's Long Shadows: Global Reactions to Perestroika and 'Reform and Opening Up,” Point Alpha Research Institute, October 5-7, 2023
• “Cold War Islamisms,” Freie Universit?t Berlin, 15.3.2019-16.3.2019
• “New Histories and Anthropologies of Development, Humanitarianism, and Human Rights,” Freie Universit?t Berlin, 15.11.2018-16.11.2018
• “The Middle East in the 1980s: An Exploratory Workshop,” Freie Universit?t Berlin, 30.6.2018
  Panels
• “Archives of the Global South: Researching & Conceptualizing Anti-Imperial Internationalism,” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Meeting, 23.6.2021
• “New Approaches to the History of the United States and the Third World,” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Meeting, June 23, 2018
• “Bids for Recognition: International Society and Third World Sovereignty,” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Meeting, June 22, 2018
• “The Origins of Global History: A Reappraisal,” (Toynbee Prize lecture, Jürgen Osterhammel), American Historical Association Annual Meeting, 6.1.2017

Cooperation/ Projects

Internal Funding Programs at the University of Regensburg

• "UR Fellows" Funding Program (Interdisciplinary Research Collaborations and Interdisciplinary Networking at the University of Regensburg, together with Dr. Dani Nassif for Project "Writing a “History Without Documents”: Using Literary and Creative Sources to Write the History of Post-Conflict Societies), (2023-2024)
• "freiraum2023@ur" Funding Program (Program for Development and Testing of Innovative Ideas in Digital Teaching for the Project "Researching with Digitized Archives and Producing Short Videos"), (2023)
• Host for Prof. Dr. Mia Fuller, the First Berkeley-Regensburg Guest Professor (2023)(Press Release)
• Outgoing Fellowship Program, Leibniz ScienceCampus "Europe and America in the Modern World" (University of Michigan), (2023) (Report)

Other Funding Programs

• Funding from the Gerda and Hermann Weber Foundation (Gerda-und-Hermann-Weber-Stiftung) for the Planned 2027 Conference "Communist Regimes and the Global Economy Since the 1970s" (2024, conference to take place in 2027)
• Funding from Bavarian-Czech Academic Agency (BTHA) for International Workshop "Central Asia trans/regional: New Regional Studies Approaches" (2024)
• Funding from Point Alpha Research Institute for International Workshop "Reform's Long Shadows: Global Reactions to Perestroika and ‘Reform and Opening Up,’ 1978-1991" (More Information) (2023)

This research project explores the history of relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, and the United States of America during the years 1991–2003. These were tumultuous years, bookended on the one hand by the expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait by a massive international coalition, led by the United States, during the Gulf War (1990–1991) and, on the other hand, by the United States’ invasion of Iraq, together with its “coalition of the willing”, in 2003. Whereas the Gulf War left Saddam Hussein in power, the 2003 Iraq War led to the ouster of Saddam and efforts to transform the Iraqi state into a model democracy for the Arab world. Indeed, from 2003–2004, an American-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) led an ambitious program of nation-building to make Iraq a democratic, neoliberal, pro-American Arab state. American visions for Iraq quickly gave way to chaos, however, as sectarian violence claimed the lives of many Iraqis. Likewise, Iraq’s neighbor, the Islamic Republic of Iran, soon assumed an unprecedented level of influence on Iraqi politics, above all through its support of Shi?a militias.

How, this project asks, did Washington and Tehran understand their adversary — Saddam Hussein — and the prospects for regime change in Iraq throughout the 1990s? How did the Washington and Tehran, neither of which sought to transform Iraq in the wake of the Gulf War, come to shift their views over the course of the next decade? How, moreover, did Saddam Hussein seek to push back against pressure from Washington and Tehran, including by portraying himself as a champion of Sunni Arab interests? And how did exogenous developments, such as the Oslo Accords (1993), the election of Iranian reformists (1997), and the September 11 attacks (2001), affect relations between the three countries? Together, these questions illuminate the evolving strategic calculations of Washington, Tehran, and Baghdad, and offer a deeper understanding of how regional and global developments reshaped their interactions in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War.

This project proposes to answer these questions through new historical sources that have only recently become available, or which have seldom been brought into conversation with one another. Researchers have had access to the files of the Iraqi Ba’th Party since the late 2000s, but recently-released Iraqi state files covering the period from 1968-2003 allow us to see the world from behind Saddam’s desk—including his struggle against Washington and Tehran — and in greater detail than ever before. Complementing these new Iraqi archives are new American sources, such as the papers of CPA head L. Paul Bremer III and new files from the Bill Clinton Presidential Library. We propose to bring these sources into conversation with memoirs and diaries from leading Iranian officials. Together, these sources will allow us to tell the story described above and make a significant contribution to the historiography of Ba?thist Iraq, the Iraq War, and the post-Cold War international order.

The project is led by Prof. Dr. Timothy Nunan and supported by Dr. Dani Nassif, building on their collaboration through the University of Regensburg’s UR Fellows program. It builds upon Prof. Dr. Nunan’s work on the history of Shi’a Islamism, Iranian foreign policy, and an emerging research focus on post-Cold War international history. Dr. Nassif, a native of Lebanon and native speaker of the Arabic language, brings to the project his expertise in Arab intellectual terrains and connections with Iraqi universities through his work for the DAAD project “Digital Teaching and Learning in Historical Studies.” While Prof. Dr. Nunan and Dr. Nassif constitute the core team for the project, it is anticipated that they will collaborate with colleagues from institutions such as the Catholic University of Eril, the University of Baghdad, and the University of Sulaimani.

The project is funded by the generous support of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for a period of two years, starting in October 2025.

Prarie Precarity: Professor Dr. Nunan Publishes Piece on LSC Exchange to University of Kansas for Frictions: Europe, America and Global Transformations

Prof. Nunan visited Kansas in April 2025 as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Kansas (KU), supported by the Leibniz ScienceCampus ‘Europe and America in the Modern World’.In a piece for the Leibniz ScienceCampus' blog (external link, opens in a new window), Frictions, he reflects on his stay in Kansas, where he lectured on his research and introduced students to the University of Regensburg’s international fellowship programs. He also delivered a talk at the Max Kade Center for German-American Studies on the challenges facing Germany post-Merkel. A highlight of his trip was a visit to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, where he explored Truman’s pivotal Cold War decisions, including his views on race relations and civil rights. Prof. Nunan also participated in the KU Powwow and Indigenous Cultures Festival, honoring local Indigenous traditions, and explored the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.

Throughout his stay, Prof. Nunan met with KU faculty to discuss potential academic collaborations. His visit emphasized the importance of maintaining trans-Atlantic ties, particularly as tensions between the U.S. and Europe rise under the Trump Administration. He highlighted the ongoing value of programs like DAAD and the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship in preserving scholarly exchanges despite political challenges.