Dr Firuza Melville (nee Abdullaeva) is a graduate (BA, MA honour) of the Iranian Philology Department, Faculty of Oriental Studies, St Petersburg University, where she received her PhD in Iranian philology, Art and Islamic Studies in 1989. She was an Associate Professor at the University of St Petersburg when she joined the Cambridge Shahnama Project in 2002 after a term at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton) and a term at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) as a Fulbright Professor. From September 2005 until September 2010 she was Princess Ashraf Lecturer in Persian Literature at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Keeper of the Firdousi Library of Wadham College. From October 2010 she was the Iran Heritage Foundation Research Associate and the Head of the Shahnama Centre; from November 2011 was elected Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.

Research interests include Classical and modern Persian literature, Persian and Islamic art and codicology, travelogue literature of the Qajar period, Russian Orientalist art, literature and music in Central Asia and the Caucasus, Russian, Soviet and Persian ballet.