Professor Roaf was an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford and a Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford as well as G.A. Wainwright Fellow in Near Eastern Archaeology at Oxford University. Professor Roaf's chief interests are in the art, archaeology and history of the Near East (particularly Iran and Mesopotamia) from prehistoric times up to and including the Islamic period. He has worked on several sites in Iran, wrote his doctoral thesis about Persepolis, and has travelled extensively in Iran and was also the director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq and former Professor Near Eastern Archaeology at Munich University. He has accompanied numerous visits to Iran both before and after the Islamic Revolution.