Dr. Anna Caney will be joining IMES in early January 2026. Dr. Caney’s research interests focus on the history of U.S. Iranian relations, war, culture and society, and the history of protest and rebellion.

Dr. Caney earned her PhD at Florida State University. She is the author of the forthcoming book “I Hope to Return One Day: The United States Air Force, Iran, and the Costs of a Cold War Friendship.” She is currently an independent scholar specializing in Gulf State Analytics. Prior to this role, Dr. Caney had a long teaching career where she served as Assistant Professor of History at Florida Southern College teaching courses about the Middle East, Europe and the British Empire and earlier as Instructor of Record at Tallahassee Community College (Middle East, World Civilizations) and Florida State University (Ancient- Medieval, Crusades, British Empire).

While at GW, Dr. Caney will be completing a case study in U.S. foreign policy with Iran based on the military relationship between Iran and the United States Air Force. The study analyzes the use of American training programs as a part of U.S. Iranian relations by telling the story of the Iranian pilots who trained in the U.S. from 1946 to 1980, their relationships with the American communities they worked and lived in, how the Islamic Revolution altered both the United States Air Force and the Iranian military, and what happened in their lives after the United States broke diplomatic relations with Iran.
In addition, Dr. Caney will be writing an article on the relationship between Iran, the U.S. Civil Rights movement and the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960’s, the Iranian regime and the Ku Klux Klan from 1979 to 2024, and how Iranians, the Iranian Regime, and the Ku Klux Klan used race and identity as a soft power tool in the history of U.S. Iranian relations.