Dr Gurdofarid Miskinzoda is an alumna of the IIS' Graduate Programme in Islamic Studies and Humanities. She first heard of IIS in 1991, as a schoolgirl, at a village gathering in Tajikistan. She holds a BA and MA in Arabic and Persian studies from Moscow State University, and a PhD from SOAS, University of London. Dr Miskinzoda now serves as one of the co-heads of the Department of Education and managing editor of the Shiʿi Heritage Series. In this conversation, she traces the family and the teachers who carried her from Khorog to Moscow to London. That path ran through a civil war, a contested scholarship, and a four-hour interview at a Moscow airport. She explains why Shiʿi studies sat on the margins of the field for so long. She describes how IIS built the Shiʿi Heritage Series across the whole Shiʿi tradition. She closes on the alumni, on 50 years of IIS, and on why she cannot separate her scholarship from her life.