Hamid Ahmadi

Who is Hamid Ahmadi?

Hamid Ahmadi is a historian of modern Iranian history. He received his Msc in Naval Studies, M.A. in Political Science and worked on his Ph.D in this field at the Free University of Berlin. Ahmadi was member of the Iranian Military-Naval Strategic Committee and military adviser to the defense minister in 1979 and military adviser to former Iranian president Abulhassan Banisadr in 1980 to 1981. He is the founder and director of the Research Association for Iranian Oral History, which aims to expand knowledge of recent and contemporary Iranian history and politics by covering more general aspects of social history. In pursuit of these objectives the association conducts oral history interviews and also collects documents, both manuscript and printed. While RAIOH has interviewed many leading politicians, diplomats and soldiers, it also tries to preserve for posterity the ideas, sentiments, experience, lives and what the French Annales School calls the mentalities of those not belonging to the elite—some of whom come from the lower middle-class and even the working class.