Ērān: Central and West Asia in the First Millennium CE

and Khodadad Rezakhani (University of Leiden), the event was the first in a series of what are planned to be three, week-long forums conducted as part of the rn, Trn, and Hrm: West and Central and Asia in the First Millennium CE project.The rn Forum focused particularly on the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE), while future forums are anticipated to emphasize the Turanian and Mediterranean worlds, but to keep the center of research on the Iranian world broadly.The Sasanian Empire played a critical global role in Late Antiquity, but its scholars typically find themselves dispersed and peripheral as parts of larger projects focused on other areas and political powers.While recent decades have seen an increased interest in global studies of the first millennium, more still needs to be done to center the Iranian world, which is often sidelined by difficult, less accessible or available source material, especially in comparison to the Mediterranean and Roman worlds.There is also a tendency to collapse the Sasanian Empire between the better studied empires of Rome and China, and research has been further restricted by a shortage of coherent groups and agendas that seriously consider Central and West Asian Late Antiquity from a global viewpoint.Even at the Forum itself there was often a sense of "outsider" status.Several academics present