Ata Heshmati

Ata is a PhD candidate at the the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST), University of Toronto. His research primarily focuses on the history of crafts and small technologies in Iran and West Asia, particularly in the early 20th century. In his doctoral work, he investigates the rise of multinational systematic surveys of Persian crafts and local technologies, which emerged partiallty within the Pahlavi dynasty's nation-building efforts in the 1920s and 1930s. Drawing on the concept of “technoprospecting,” Ata explores how these surveys sparked a trans-Asian search for indigenous technologies in southwestern Iran, technologies that held potential for the development of infrastructure, industry, commerce, and technoscientific enterprises.

Ata earned his MA in the Science and Technology Studies (STS) program at UBC-Vancouver, where he examined the concept of “Islamic technoscience” in relation to the technoscientific activities in post-1979 Iran under the Islamic Republic state.