Florian Schwarz Studies of Iranian and Islamic Studies at the Universities of Tübingen and Cologne. PhD 1999, University of Tübingen. 1996-1998 researcher at the Research Center for Islamic Numismatics, University of Tübingen. 1999-2005 Wissenschaftlicher Assistent, Department of Oriental and Islamic Studies at the University of Bochum. 2005-2009 Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Washington, Seattle. Since January 2010 Director of the Institute of Iranian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Since 2011 (Honorarprofessor) at the University of Vienna. 2015 elected Corresponding Member of the Ausatrian Academy of Sciences. Member of the editorial boards of Veröffentlichungen zur Iranistik and Iranische Onomastik (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press) and Handbook of Oriental Studies – Near and Middle East (Brill) and of the Scientific Advisory Boards of Der Islam (de Gruyter) and Rivista degli Studi Orientali (Sapienza University of Rome).