Abbas Djavadi is Associate Director of Broadcasting at RFE/RL, overseeing programs in Persian (Radio Farda), Dari and Pashto (Radio Free Afghanistan), Arabic (Radio Free Iraq), Tajik, Uzbek, Turkmen, Kyrgyz, and Kazakh. He joined RFE/RL in 1985 as an editor of the Azeri Service and later served as a supervising analyst of the Central Asian programs and Director of RFE/RL's Tajik Service. He set up RFE/RL's first broadcasts to Iran (Radio Azadi) in 1998 and Radio Free Afghanistan in 2002. After serving for more than three years as Director of RFE/RL’s Azeri Service, Abbas was promoted to Associate Director of Broadcasting. Before joining RFE/RL, Abbas worked as a lecturer at the University of Cologne, Germany, and contributed to a dozens of newspapers, magazines, and broadcast services in Germany, Great Britain, Turkey, Iran, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan. He has written two books and numerous articles on Persian and Azeri languages, socio-linguistics, politics, and history.
BA in German Studies and MA in Linguistics, University of Ankara (Turkey), 1972 and 1974; Ph.D. in Linguistics and Oriental Studies, University of Cologne (Germany), 1984.
Abbas has published articles in the Teheran-based journal Varliq, and Turk Dunyasi Tarih Dergisi (Turkey), Central Asian Survey (Great Britain), and Die Welt des Islams (Germany). He has also contributed, both as a writer and interview subject, to the BBC, Deutsche Welle, NTV (Turkey), ANS (Azerbaijan), and Tajik publications and media outlets.