ABDUL LATEEF USTA possesses a professional degree in art conservation and works to promote and conserve the local art and heritage of Rajasthan-India.
ADEL ADAMOVA is a senior research associate and a curator of Islamic Art in the Oriental Department of the State Hermitage Museum (St.Petersburg, Russian Federation). Her research work is mainly on medieval painting of the Near and Middle East.
AHMED WAHBY is Assistant Professor of Design History and Theory at the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Arts, The German University in Cairo. Wahby has a degree in Architecture, an M.A. from the American University in Cairo, and a Ph.D. from the Oriental Department of the Otto-Friedrich University, School of Human Sciences, Art and Culture in Bamberg, Germany.
ALEXANDRA VAN PUYVELDE is a museologist and scientific collaborator at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels. She contributed to the Art of the Islamic World gallery (inaugurated in 2008) and is contributing to the catalogue of the Islamic Art collection (to be published in 2012). In October 2011, she begins a PhD program at the Department of Languages and Cultures of the Near East & North Africa at Ghent University, where her research will focus on Iranian dress from the Safavid to Zand periods.
ELIZABETH ETTINGHAUSEN is an independent scholar who lives in Princeton, New Jersey. She has been a fellow at Dumbarton Oaks and Princeton University, where she organized an exhibition at its Art Museum entitled “The Near Eastern City since 1800.”
EMILY NEUMEIER is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is considering a dissertation on provincial Ottoman architecture from the late eighteenth century. Emily graduated from Boston College summa cum laude with a B.A. in Art History, and spent a year in Istanbul as a Fulbright scholar researching late Ottoman calligraphy.
FERNANDO MARTINEZ NESPRAL is professor of the History of Architecture and associate professor of Islamic and Mudejar Art at the University of Buenos Aires´s School of Architecture, and post-doctoral scholar at the University of Córdoba (Argentina). He has also served as a curator of several exhibitions about Andalusian art and architecture at the Museum of Spanish Art of Buenos Aires.
FILIZ YENISEHIRLIOGLU is professor of Ottoman Art and Architecture at Başkent University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Design and Architecture in Ankara, Turkey. She has been the scientific director of the Topkapı Palace Tiles Digital Database Project since 2003 supported by the Topkapı Palace Museum and Friends of Topkapı Palace.
KHALED TADMORI is Chairman of the Heritage and Historical Monuments Sub-Committee in the Municipality of Tripoli, Lebanon. He is also an Associate Professor of Architecture in the Arts and Architecture Institute at Lebanese University. He researches the conservation methods of Islamic cities and architecture, with a regional focus on documenting the historical cities and architecture of the Middle East.
LAURA PARODI is an independent scholar specializing in Islamic gardens, painting and the arts of the book. She is especially interested in the way objects were used, gifted, collected and reconfigured for new purposes or to suit new tastes. Forthcoming publications include The Visual World of Muslim India (I.B. Tauris, London), a Muqarnas Supplement on early Mughal ceremonial (in collaboration with Wheeler M. Thackston) and a book on the Mughal atelier in Kabul.
MAHNAZ SHAYESTEHFAR is an Associate Professor in Islamic art at the University of Tarbiyat Modares in Tehran, Iran. She is also the head of the institute of Islamic Art Studies and the managing director and editor-in-chief of the semi-annual Journal of Islamic Art Studies.
MANDY RIDLEY is a visual artist whose work includes both exhibition and permanently installed public commissions. Ridley uses colour, pattern and craft in her artwork to explore points of resonance between people of differing cultural experience, tracing history, influence and connection. She has undertaken Residencies in India and is currently working on an Australia Council funded research project into the Islamic Art of Spain, India and Malaysia.
PETER WANDEL is an assistant curator and the head of educational resources at The David Collection in Copenhagen. During the last four years he has participated in the reinstallation of the Islamic section with special responsibility for the galleries for Cultural History and Calligraphy and for structuring and designing the museum’s new webpage. Presently, Peter is co-curating a special exhibition on Sufism.
REBECCA BRIDGMAN curates the Islamic Pottery collection at The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge and is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at St. John’s College. Following election in 2007, she is also Vice-President of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean and recently was appointed associate editor of the Society’s journal Al-Masāq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean.
SAID ENNAHID is an archaeologist and associate professor of Islamic art and architecture at al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. His most recent area of research is on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for the preservation and valorization of ancient manuscript collections in Morocco.
SANDRA AUBE is a postdoctoral researcher (CNRS 8167, Paris). Since 2005, she has been a lecturer in Islamic Art for various institutions, such as Sorbonne, Picardie and Nanterre universities, and the Catholic Institute of Paris. She collaborated on the study of stuccoes from the Sabra al-Mansuriya excavations at the Raqqada Museum (Tunisia), and is now studying the Islamic collection of the National Museum of Ceramic Art in Sèvres.
SIMON O’MEARA is the material culture research fellow of the European Research Council-funded project, “The Here and the Hereafter in Islamic Traditions,” hosted by the University of Utrecht. Prior to this appointment he was an Associate Professor of Art History at the American University of Kuwait. He researches the sociological dimensions of Islamic art and architecture, with a regional focus on the art and architecture of North Africa.
SIMON RETTIG is a researcher in the DFG – Emmy Noether Junior Research Group Kosmos-Ornatus. Ornament in France and Persia ca. 1400 in Comparison at the Freie Universität in Berlin. His project is entitled Designing the Book: Function and Evolution of Illuminations in Persian Manuscripts between 1370 and 1500. He also teaches undergraduate seminars on the history of Islamic art. Rettig received his PhD in Islamic Art and Archaeology from the University of Aix-Marseille 1.
VIVIENNE S.M. ANGELES is an associate professor in the Department of Religion at La Salle University in Philadelphia, where she teaches Islam and Comparative Religions. She holds a BA in Political Science from the University of the Philippines, an MA in Political Science from Kansas State University and an MA and PhD in Religious Studies from Temple University. She is past president of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies and is an affiliate of the Harvard University Pluralism Project.
DR. WAFAA ABDULAALI received her PhD from the University of Baghdad (2003) and has been awarded fellowships by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University (2007-2008) and by Harvard Divinity School (2008-2009). She is currently teaching at the University of Mosul, Iraq.
