Associated Staff
Honorary Professors
Honorary Fellows
Honorary Lecturers
Associate Fellows
Friends of the Institute
Honorary Professors
Professor Robert Hillenbrand
Professor Robert Hillenbrand was educated at the universities of Cambridge (Englsih Literature; M.A.) and Oxford (Oriental Studies; D.Phil. 1974). He has been teaching at the Department of Fine Art in the University of Edinburgh since 1971, and was awarded a chair of Islamic art there in 1989. His travels have taken him throughout the Islamic world. He has held visiting professorships at Princeton, UCLA, Bamberg, Dartmouth College, and Groningen. From 1992 to 2004 he held a short-term visiting professorship at Leiden. In 1993 he delivered the Kevorkian Lectures at New York University, and in 2004 he was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the American University in Cairo. His scholarly interests focus on Islamic architecture, painting and iconography, with particular reference to Iran and early Islamic Syria. He works with the following languages: German (native speaker), French (excellent), Italian (reading knowledge), Spanish (reading knowledge), Persian (colloquial) and Arabic (good knowledge for epigraphic purposes).
He has written the following books: Imperial Images in Persian Painting; Islamic Art and Architecture (translated into German in 2005, Danish in 2008 andPersian in 2009); The Architecture of Ottoman Jerusalem: An Introduction; Studies in Medieval Islamic Architecture (2 vols.);the prize-winning Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning (translated into Persian in 1998 and 2000); The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque; and Islamic Architecture in North Africa (co-author). In addition, he has edited seven books and co-edited two more. He has also published some 150 articles on aspects of Islamic art and architecture.
Honorary Fellows
Dr Paul Luft
Born and educated in Germany, Dr Luft read Iranian History, Iranian Studies and Islamic Studies at Berlin and Göttingen Universities before undertaking a three year Visiting Fellowship at St Antony's College, Oxford. He went on to teach Middle Eastern Studies and Persian History and Literature at Manchester University and also taught at the Oriental School, Durham University. Following his retirement in 1999 he became an Honorary Fellow of the IMEIS at Durham University where he founded the Centre for Iranian Studies with Ali Ansari.
He is a member of various academic societies in Europe, among them European Society for Iranian Studies, BRISMES and BIPS which has elected him as Honorary Vice-President in 2006. Since 1993 he has been a member of the editorial board of the journals of BRISMES, IRAN and several academic journals in Iran. His main academic interests are periods of transformation in 19th and 20th century history of Iran including the political and cultural changes from a tribalised to a court society in the first half of the 19th century and further administrative reorganisation of the state in Iran in the early period of Reza Shah. (1925 – 1941).
Honorary Lecturers
Sir Geoffrey Adams, KCMG
Geoffrey Adams is a graduate of Oxford University, and joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1979. His early career took him to Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt and Paris, where he spent two years at the Ecole Nationale d'Administration. More recently he was Consul General in Jerusalem (responsible for the UK's relations with the Palestinian Authority) and Principal Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary (at the time the Rt Hon Jack Straw MP). From 2006-March 2009 Geoffrey was British Ambassador to Iran. In September 2009 he will be taking up a new post as Director, Middle East and North Africa at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.
Associate Fellows
Dr Bernd Kaussler, James Madison University
Dr Bernd Kaussler finished his PhD on British-Iranian relations and the Salman Rushdie affair at the Institute and School of International Relations and is currently Assistant Professor of Political Science at James Madison University where he is teaching courses on Middle East Security, Political Islam and US Foreign Policy. His research interests on Iran are focusing on foreign policy, human rights and political violence and security. He is a contributor to Jane's "Iran Security Sentinel" and is currently working on a project on US-Iranian relations.
University Profile
Dr Pedram Khosronejad, Department of Social Anthropology
Dr Amanda Phillips
Dr. Amanda Phillips holds a DPhil from the Khalili Research Centre for the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East, University of Oxford (2011). Her work focuses on the visual culture of the early modern Islamic world, and specifically on textiles and other highly mobile objects and commodities between the Ottoman and Iranian spheres. She was recently a postdoctoral fellow at the Berlin Museum of Islamic Art, working on a project sponsored by the Max Planck Gesellschaft / Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. Her essay, “A Material Culture: Ottoman Velvets and their Owners, 1600-1750” won the Margaret B. Ševčenko award for Islamic Art and Culture in 2012.
Friends of the Institute
Roger Cohen - New York Times
Jim Muir, BBC
Sadeq Saba, BBC
Jon Snow, Channel 4 News