[5][6] The association also assisted in establishing the Harvard University project Women's World in Qajar Iran: A digital Archive and Website [7] and co-funded the foundation of the Centre for the Study of the International Relations of the Middle East and North Africa (Cirmena) of the University of Cambridge.
Among these persons, were, in Europe: Leo Barjesteh, Ali Mirza Qajar, Hans Timmermans,[9] Willem Vogelsang, Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood and Corien Vuurman, in the United States: Manoutchehr Eskandari-Qajar, Farhad Sepahbody and Majid Tehranian,[10] and in Iran: Bahman Bayani, Mansoureh Ettehadieh and Bahman Farman Farmaian.
[11] In Iran in the 1990s this situation seemed to change and the time to start an association to facilitate a more objective study of the period seemed opportune.
May 2000 saw the first meeting of IQSA at the premises of the publishing house (Nashr-e Tarikh-e Iran) of Dr. Mansoureh Ettehadieh in Tehran.
This inaugural conference ‘Reading early photographs: visual sources for the interpretation of Iranian Qajar history’ took place at Leiden University.