Mehdi Jami, February 1961, is a notable Persian

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 journalist, photographer, filmmaker and writer.

Jami holds a master's degree in Persian language

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

 and literature

Persian literature

Persian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language...

 from Ferdowsi University

Ferdowsi University of Mashad

Ferdowsi University of Mashhad is the largest research university in eastern Iran named after the great epic poet and historian of Iranian national history Ferdowsi, whose Shahnameh is a chef-d'oeuvre in Persian literature. FUM campus is located in Mashhad, the capital city of the Razavi...

 (1992). He is also a self taught photographer and filmmaker.

His research interests include Iranistics (his book on Iranian Ancient Literary History published in Tehran, 2000) and Islamic History (he has written for Islamica Encyclopedia, Leiden 2008) and also Persian culture in Central Asia (Tajikistan

Tajikistan

Tajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan , is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders it to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east....

 and Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....

). His documentary film on Tajik music Falak was released in 2005. Mehdi Jami is a member of Artists Without Frontiers.

Since June 2006 (until October 2008), he was the director of the Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

-based Persian-language Radio Zamaneh

Radio Zamaneh

Radio Zamaneh is an Amsterdam-based Persian language radio. "Zamaneh" is the Persian literary term for "time".Radio Zamaneh is founding by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs but in content an independent broadcasting organization, registered as a non-profit organization in the Netherlands, with...

 which has been the first Persian media outlet based on the idea of Citizen Journalism.

He worked for BBC's Persian Service

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 between May 1996 and May 2006. His Persian weblog "Sibestan" (first post: May 2003) is one of the most read Persian weblogs.

See also

• Persian culture
• Intellectual movements in Iran
  Intellectual movements in Iran
  Intellectual movements in Iran involve the Iranian experience of modernity and its associated art, science, literature, poetry, and political structures that have been changing since the 19th century.- History of Iranian modernity :...