Nationality British | Spouse Samantha Knights | |
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Occupation Writer, scholar, teacher Subject Travel, Arab World, Afghanistan and Central Asia, Middle Eastern Current Affairs People also search for Matthew Leeming, Helen Loveday, Christoph Baumer, Fitzroy Morrissey Books Asia Overland: Tales of T, Afghanistan: A Compani, Caesar's Footprints: Journeys, Iran: Persia: Ancient a, Sufism: Mystical Writings o | ||
Bijan Omrani is a British Classical scholar, historian, journalist, teacher and author.
Contents
Early life and Education
Omrani was born in York, England, in 1979. He studied at the Wellington College, Berkshire before reading Classics and English Literature at Lincoln College, Oxford. He later studied at King's College London.
Family and personal life
Omrani is related to one of the British Army officers responsible for demarcating the northern boundary of Afghanistan in 1885 and surveying Afghan tribal territories in the North West Frontier Province, the artist and surveyor Lt Richard Eyles Galindo.
His paternal family is from north-western Iran, and his maternal one from England, though with the British Empire in India in the 18th–19th century.
He is married to Samantha Knights, a barrister at Matrix Chambers.
Career
Omrani taught Classics at Eton College and Westminster School where he contributed new Latin verse to school ceremonies. He is currently working as an editor for the Asian Affairs journal, since 2014. He also lectures at the British Museum, Royal Society for Asian Affairs, SOAS, King's College London, and the Pakistan Society.
He is the author of several books, as well as a frequent contributor for specialised articles pertaining the Afghanistan-Pakistan border problems. He has previously questioned the legal basis of the Durand Agreement but now he considers it to be valid but unsatisfactory, and that there is an urgent need for a wider regional solution to the problem perhaps based on a recognition of the line but combined with shared sovereignty in the neighbouring tribal areas.
Omrani was interviewed by France 24 in 2011 about the Afghan-Pakistani border problems., and was also featured in The New York Times in 2011, after an incident on the Pakistani border.