Payam Mohseni

Payam Mohseni is the inaugural director of the Belfer Center's Iran project and fellow for Iran studies at the center. He is also a visiting assistant professor in the department of government at Harvard University.

Mohseni’s research focuses on the internal policymaking process of the Iranian state and the dynamics of factional politics in post-revolutionary Iran. Previously, Mohseni was a research fellow with the Belfer Center's international security program. Before that, he was a junior research fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University and a member of the Iran Study Group at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. He holds a Ph.D. in government from Georgetown University, and he obtained a B.A. in development studies from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.A. in Conflict, Security, and Development from the Department of War Studies at King's College London.