The Hamad bin Khalifa Travel Fellowship
The Hamad bin Khalifa Travel Fellowship provides financial support to 15 individuals who wish to attend the Third Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art, to be held in Córdoba, Spain, November 2-4, 2009. This year, approximately 300 fellows from 60 countries submitted applications.
2009 Hamad bin Khalifa Fellows:
Samer Akkach is Associate Professor of architectural history and theory at the School of Architecture, The University of Adelaide, Australia, and Founding Director of the Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA). Akkach’s recent work explores the socio-urban and intellectual histories of Islam in the 17th and 18th centuries, focusing on the life and works of an eminent figure of Damascus, ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi. His publications include Letters of a Sufi Scholar: The Correspondence of ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (1641-1731) (Brill, 2009), ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi: Islam and the Enlightenment (Oneworld, 2007), Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: an Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas (SUNY, 2005), and the “The Poetics of Concealment: al-Nabulusi’s Encounter with the Dome of the Rock,” Muqarnas 22 (November 2005). He is the editor of De-Placing Difference: Architecture, Culture and Imaginative Geography, (CAMEA, 2002), and Self, Place and Imagination: Cross-Cultural Thinking in Architecture (CAMEA, 1999). Akkach was awarded a visiting research fellowship in MIT’s Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture in 2002 and has been an invited speaker at numerous conferences, including Islamic Freethinking and Western Radicalism (2008) at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Deus (e)X Historia (2007) at MIT. He received his BA from the University of Damascus in 1983, his M.A. in Architectural Design from the University of New South Wales in 1985 and his Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of Sydney in 1992.
Mari-Tere Alvarez is a Project Specialist with the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Associate Director of the University of Southern California's International Museum Institute and the Project Director of the University of Southern California’s Mencía de Mendoza Research Project. Alvarez received her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Southern California in 2003. Her publications include “The Almoneda: the Second Hand Art Market in Spain,” in Auctions, Agents and Dealers: the Mechanisms of the European Art Market c1660-1860 (Oxford, 2007) and “Artistic Enterprise and Spanish Patronage: the Art Market in 15th-16th Century Spain,” in The Art Market (Ashgate, 1998). She has delivered papers at numerous conferences, including Silver in the Americas: The International Context (2008) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and at the annual conference of the College Art Association in 2007. Alvarez is currently developing a project, tentatively titled Cobalt Blue, which looks at artistic innovations in color in the Islamic world.
Heba Nayel Barakat is a Project Manager and Islamic Art Consultant at the Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage in Giza, Egypt, and a Consultant to the Director of the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia. She is the author of numerous publications, including Treasures of the Illustrated and Illuminated Persian Manuscripts at the National Library of Egypt (2008), Mightier than the Sword: The Beauty of the Arabic Script (co-author, 2004), Beyond Boundaries: Tents of the Islamic World (2003) and “Architecture: An Object or Subject in Persian Miniature Paintings,” Alam Al Binaa’ 192. Barakat received her B.A. from the American University in Cairo in 1985, her M.A. in the History of Architecture from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, in 1992 and her Ph.D. in the History of Islamic Art from the Institute of Oriental Studies, The Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, in 1998.
Fatma Dahmani is a Ph.D. candidate in Islamic Art History at the University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne where her dissertation examines the wall paintings found at the Abbasid city of Samarra, Iraq. A recent article, published in Tudmir, Revista del museo de Santa Clara de Murcia (2008), examines Islamic wall paintings in Murcia, Spain. Dahmani received both her B.A. and her M.A. from the University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne, in 2005 and 2006.
Blake de Maria is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Santa Clara University where she also serves as the Director of the University’s Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program. She has several forthcoming publications, including Becoming Venetian: Immigrants and the Arts in Early Modern Venice (Yale, 2009). De Maria is the recipient of a variety of fellowships and awards, including research grants from the Renaissance Society of America in 2006 and from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation in 2005. She received her B.A. in Art History from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1993 and her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2003.
Haris Dervisevic is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Zagreb, Croatia, where his research interests focus on Islamic art in Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially in the 18th century (his dissertation is titled Illumination and Mujelid Work of Arabic Manuscripts in Gazi Husrev Bey's Library in Sarajevo). Dervisevic received his B.A. in Arabic Language and Literature in 2006 and his M.A. in Art History in 2007, both from the University of Sarajevo. He received fellowships from the Ministry of Education – Canton Sarajevo in 2005 and in 1998, and is a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Art History at the University of Sarajevo.
Julia Gonnella is a Curator at the Museum of Islamic Art (SMPK) in Berlin. She has directed the Islamic section of the Syrian-German excavations on the Citadel of Aleppo since 1996 and has curated several exhibitions such as “Sultan an-Nasir Salah ad-Din between Cairo and Damascus,” Cairo, Taz Palace (2008-09) and “Saladin und die Kreuzfahrer,” in Halle, Oldenburg and Mannheim (2004-05). Among her publications are “The Aleppo-Room and Ottoman Style in Syria” in Angels, Peonies and Fabulous Creatures: The Aleppo Room from Berlin (Ed. by J. Gonnella and J. Kröger, 2008), Die Zitadelle von Aleppo und der Tempel des Wettergottes (with Wahid Khayata and Kay Kohlmeyer, 2005) and Ein christlich-orientalisches Wohnhaus des 17. Jahrhunderts aus Aleppo (Syrien). Das “Aleppo-Zimmer” im Museum für Islamische Kunst, SMPK (1996). Julia Gonnella received her B.A. in Islamic Art and Archaeology in 1986 and her M.A. in Social Anthropology in 1987, both from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her Ph.D. in Islamic Studies and Social Anthropology was awarded by the University of Tübingen in 1994.
Mónica Herrera-Casais is a Ph.D. student at the Universities of La Laguna and Barcelona, where her dissertation is titled The 16th-Century Nautical Atlases of ‘Alī al-Sharafī. She is also a research associate for the project Islamic Chartmaking in the Mediterranean Context (ca. 1300-1600), based at the University of Barcelona. Herrera-Casais has taught courses on the history of Islamic cartography at the University of Frankfurt and at the University of Barcelona, and was an instructor of Spanish for Foreign Students at the Department of Modern Languages of the University of Jordan (2000). Her most recent articles include “The 1413-1414 Sea Chart of Ahmad al-Aenjī,” in A Shared Legacy: Islamic Sciences East and West (Barcelona, 2008), “The Nautical Atlases of ‘Alī al-Sharafī,” in Suhayl: Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilization (Barcelona, 2008) and “Granada en los atlas náuticos de al-Sharafi, e identificación de un modelo mallorquín para la carta de al-Mursi,” in Al-Qantara: Revista de Estudios Árabes (Madrid, 2009). Herrera-Casais has been awarded a Research Fellowship from Fundación Juanelo Turriano for the History of Science and Technology (Madrid). She received her B.A. in Arabic Philology from the University of Seville in 1997 and her M.A. from the University of La Laguna in 2002.
Hadi Jahanabadian is a conservation architect with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Afghanistan, where he is involved in the preservation of cultural heritage sites in the northwestern region. He managed the restoration of the Timurid shrine complex of Khwaja Abdullah Ansari in Gazurgah and has also been involved in planning and conservation works in the citadel of Qala-Ikhtyaruddin in Herat and Noh-Gonbad mosque in Balkh. The team with whom Jahanabadian works received the 2008 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Award for Heritage Conservation for their work in Herat old city. Prior to joining AKTC, he worked with the Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization to safeguard and preserve Arg-e-Bam, a UNESCO World Heritage Site destroyed by an earthquake in 2003. A native of Iran, Hadi Jahanabadian holds a B.A. in Conservation of Historic Monuments from the University of the Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (Tehran, Iran, 2000), and an M.A. in Conservation of Historic Monuments from Azad University (Tehran, Iran, 2003).
Francesca Leoni is a post-doctoral scholar in the Department of Art History at Rice University in Houston, Texas and an Assistant Curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, where she is contributing to establishing a permanent collection of Islamic Art. She is the author of Metalwork and the Economy of Iran and Central Asia from the Seventh to the Fourteenth Century (Instituto Universitario Orientale, forthcoming) and “Picturing Evil: Images of Divs and the Reception of the Shahnama,” in Shahnama Studies II (Cambridge, Center for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 2010). Leoni has delivered numerous papers, including “Lapis Lazuli and Ultramarine: From Ancient Near East to Islam,” at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (2009) and “Islamic Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Looking to the Future,” also at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (2008). She is currently co-editing a collection of articles from a panel which she chaired at the annual College Art Association meeting in 2009 titled “On the Erotic and the Sensuous.” Leoni received her B.A. from the Instituto Universitario Orientale, Naples, in 1999 and her Ph.D. in Islamic Art and Archaeology from Princeton University in 2008.
Roxani Eleni Margariti is Associate Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University and author of Aden and the Indian Ocean Trade: 150 Years in the Life of a Medieval Arabian Port (University of North Carolina, 2007). She has participated in archaeological excavations and surveys in England, Greece, Turkey, Oman and the UAE, including such projects as the underwater excavation of the Bronze Age shipwreck at Ulu Burun, Turkey, and the Traditional Boats of Oman Project. She is a senior member of Princeton University’s project of digitization of Judeo-Arabic documents from the Cairo Geniza. Her most recent publications include “Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and ‘Pirate’ States: Conflict and Competition in the Premodern Indian Ocean World of Trade,” Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 51 (2008), “Thieves or Sultans: Dahlak and the Rulers and Merchants of Indian Ocean Port Cities, 11th-13th Centuries,” in Red Sea IV: Connected Hinterlands: The Fourth International Conference on the Peoples of the Red Sea Region (Archaeopress, forthcoming), and “Wrecks and Texts: a Judeo-Arabic Case Study,” in Tradition and Transition: Maritime Studies in the Wake of the Byzantine Shipwreck at Yassiada Turkey (Texas A&M Press, forthcoming). She is currently working on a second book on Indian Ocean polities and merchants’ networks before 1500 CE., and conducting research on the cultural legacy and contemporary status of Islamic monuments in Greece. Margariti received her B.A. from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London in 1990, her M.A. in Anthropology from Texas A&M University in 1998 and her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 2002.
Nina Nemceva is Associate Professor at National University Uzbekistan in Mirzo Ulugbeka, Tashkent, and a senior scientific collaborator at the Institute of History at the Academy of the Sciences, Uzbekistan. She is the author of 4 monographs and 130 scientific articles on the archaeology and architectural history of Central Asia, including The Great Silk Way: the Culture and Traditions, Proshlon and Present (Tashkent, 2006), Antique and Medieval Antiquities of South Uzbekistan (Tashkent, 1989), and “The Origins and Architectural Development of the Shah-i Zinde,” (Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 1977). She has taken part in numerous expeditions and archaeological excavations at locations in Uzbekistan including the Bukhara Oasis (1973-2001), the Dzhizak area (1982) and Samarkand (1950-53), as well as sites in Tajikstan (1963-65) and southern Kazakhstan (1958).
Oya Pancaroğlu is Associate Professor in the Department of History, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. Previously, she held appointments as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Archaeology and Art History at Bilkent University and as a post-doctoral research fellow and as Departmental Lecturer at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford. Pancaroğlu’s publications include “Convivial Congregations: Devotion and Hospitality in the Buildings of Medieval Anatolia,” in: Places of Worship and Devotion in Muslim Societies, eds. Zulfikar Hirji and Ruba Kana’an (forthcoming 2009), Perpetual Glory: Medieval Islamic Ceramics from the Harvey B. Plotnick Collection (Art Institute of Chicago and Yale, 2007), “Formalism and the Academic Foundation of Turkish Art in the Early Twentieth Century,” Muqarnas 24 (2007), and “The Itinerant Dragon Slayer: Forging Paths of Image and Identity in Medieval Anatolia,” Gesta 43/2 (2004). She received her B.A. from Georgetown University in 1992 and her Ph.D. in Islamic Art from Harvard University in 2000.
Karen Pinto is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at Gettysburg College. Previously, she taught at the American University of Beirut. Pinto’s publications include "Capturing Imagination: The Buja and Medieval Islamic Mappamundi,” in Views from the Edge: Essays in Honor of Richard W. Bulliet (Middle East Institute, Columbia University, 2004), “Surat Bahr al-Rum: Possible Meanings Underlying the Forms,” in Eastern Mediterranean Cartographies (Institute for Neohellenic Research, 2004), “Passion and Conflict: Medieval Islamic Views of the West,” in Mapping Medieval Geographies (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Public vs. Private: Fatih’s Interest in Maps Revisited through the Ottoman Cluster (Imago Mundi, forthcoming). She is currently working on two book projects: “The Mediterranean in the Islamic Cartographic Imagination” and “Maps and Time in the Islamic Context,” and on a digital encyclopedia of Islamic maps called MIME (Medieval Islamic Maps Encyclopedia). Pinto is a native of Karachi, Pakistan and received her Ph.D. from the Department of History at Columbia University in 2002 for her dissertation, Ways of Seeing.3: Scenarios of the World in the Medieval Islamic Cartographic Imagination.
Idries Trevathan is a Conservator at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia (IAMM) and a Co-founder of the Malaysian Heritage Conservation Network. Trevathan has taken part in conservation projects at Westminster Abbey and at the Foundling Museum, London and has completed a conservation internship at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Trevathan has received numerous awards for his work in conservation, including the National Association of Decorative & Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS) prize for conservation research, the Zibby Garnett Travelling Fellowship and the Knights of the Round Table conservation award. His papers include “The 19th century Malay Qur’an: a Comparative Study of Materials and Techniques,” Fifth Islamic Manuscript Conference, Cambridge (2009), and “Demystifying the Science: The Importance of Polarized Light Microscopy and the Identification of Pigments for Conservators,” Conservation of Paper Manuscripts and Documents, New Delhi (2008). Trevathan received his B.A. in Conservation Studies from the City and Guilds of London Art School, London, in 2006 and is currently engaged in research to identify pigments found on Islamic manuscripts in the collection of the IAMM (particularly 19th-century Malay Qurans), and is compiling an Islamic pigments database.
