Shahrouz Khalifian
The rise and development of medieval universities; town-and-gown relations in medieval urban centers; student life and the social history of scholars in the Middle Ages; medieval jurisprudence; World History
Shahrouz Khalifian is a PhD candidate specializing in medieval European history. His dissertation focuses on the social and political role of jurists in the city of Montpellier (located just west of Marseille) in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In particular, he is interested in the tense but often cooperative relationship between the city’s merchant elite and its substantial population of legal experts, many with training from Montpellier’s prominent university. To form a better understanding of the roles played by legal professionals in the city, Shahrouz has made numerous trips to the local archives in Montpellier, where he has examined hundreds of pages of notarial documents, which often reference the jurists and give a window into the fascinatingly mundane.
Before the doctoral program at Yale, Shahrouz received an MA in medieval history and World History from California State University, Long Beach. From his training in World History, Shahrouz has formed a strong appreciation for pushing students to broaden their perspectives and reassess their frames of reference when thinking about the past. He speaks Farsi and French fluently, reads Latin proficiently, and has spent several years studying Arabic, German, and Italian.