Mohammad Sagha was an Iran Project Associate at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Previously, he was the Iran Project Coordinator at the Belfer Center. He is concurrently a PhD candidate in Islamic History and Civilization at the University of Chicago where he is also Co-Director of the Shi'i Studies Group and facilitates the university’s annual Shi’i Studies Symposium. He is additionally an editor for SHARIAsource at the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School. Sagha’s research focuses on the origins of Muslim sectarian identity and political institutions, early Islamic transregional religious movements and military organization, and the historical development of Islamic political thought. In particular, he studies early Shi’i underground social networks and the foundation of Shi’i dynastic power under the Buyids and their contemporaries. Sagha also studies modern Islamic political thought and the geopolitics of the Middle East with a focus on Islamist movements, Iran, and the Shi’i Arab Middle East.

Previously, Sagha was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard, working under the supervision of Professor Roy Mottahedeh on early Islamic dynastic military politics, and has received an MA in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. Mohammad travels frequently to the region and has studied extensively in Iran, including as a researcher at the University of Tehran. He is fluent in Persian, has advanced command of Arabic, and reading knowledge of German and French.