Farshad Sonboldel is the World History and Cultures Librarian at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his Ph.D. in Modern Languages from the University of St. Andrews in the UK, following a Master’s in Persian Language and Literature from the University of Tehran, Iran. In addition to his academic research background and publications in English, he is an award-winning poet, literary critic, and researcher in Persian.

He has published four books in Persian, two selections of poems titled Metropolis (2015) and She’r-e Boland-e Sharayet (2019), for which he received the Ahmad Shamlou Poetry Award in 2020, as well as a research monograph, Gozaresh-e Nahib-e Jonbesh-e Adabi-e Shahin: Tondar Kia (2016) about the works of an avant-garde Persian poet in the first half of the twentieth century, and an edited volume on the current trends of the literary criticism in Persian literature titled Naqd-e Irad (2021). His recently published book is titled The Rebellion of Forms in Modern Persian Poetry: Politics of Poetic Experimentation (2024). He is the Editor for MELA Notes (Journal of the Middle East Librarians’ Association) and Deputy Editor for the Iranian Studies Journal. Sonboldel is Bahari Fellow in the Persian Arts of the Book, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford (2024).