Shireen Tahmaaseb Hunter is an independent scholar.[1] Until 2019, she was a Research Professor at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., with which she had been associated since 2005, as Visiting Fellow and then Visiting Professor.[1] She became an honorary fellow of ACMCU in September 2019.[1]
From 1965 to 1979 during the Pahlavi era, Hunter served as a diplomat in the Iranian ministry of Foreign Affairs.[1] She was at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington from 1983 to 2005,[1] as director of the Islam Program, 1998–2005, deputy director of the Middle East Program, 1983–1992, and senior associate (while in Brussels), 1993–1998. She also taught courses at Georgetown, George Mason University, and Washington College. She was Academic Fellow at Carnegie Corporation.
From 1993 to 1997, Hunter was visiting senior fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels and directed CEPS' Mediterranean Program. She was guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and research fellow at the Harvard University Center for International Affairs.
Her ACMCU profile notes that she has written 16 books and monographs and has contributed to the publication of 12 books and monographs. In addition, she has written over 100 book chapters and journal articles, and over 500 opinion pieces.[1] Hunter has lectured widely in the United States and the Middle East amongst others and has extensive media experience.[1]
Hunter is known to have authored one of the first articles on the question of identity within the post-Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan.[2] Hunter's field research about Azerbaijan's political elite and their pan-Turkist irredentist views towards Iran puts emphasis on the detestation by such elites of Iranian Azeri nationalists.[2] Her research also put emphasis on how the ruling establishment in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku are anxious about a feasible irredentist counter-claim by Iran and its Azeri elites on the Republic of Azerbaijan, and how they fear that ethnic nationalist irredentism may boomerang back at them.[3] According to Hunter, the existence of pro-Iranian sentiments among the inhabitants of the southern parts of the Azerbaijan Republic serve as evidence that concerns of this kind are perhaps legitimate.[2]
Hunter was born in Tabriz, Iran and is an Iranian Azeri.[2] She is married to Robert E. Hunter.[4]
In 2021, Hunter was named by Carnegie Corporation of New York as an honoree of the Great Immigrants Award[5]