Dr Adam Talib is an Associate Professor at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University. His research demonstrates how the methods, concerns, and reading practices of comparative literature can illuminate the cultural lives of societies that were neither structured by the nation-state nor mediated by European languages. By combining the perspective and…

Dr Foteini Spingou is a cultural historian at the University of Edinburgh working on the broad topics of Memory, Collection, Beauty, and Tradition and Empire. Her expertise lies in the relation of art and literature between the eleventh and fourteenth century Byzantium. She has also worked on late antique Egyptian wall-hangings and I'm an expert…

Dr Francesca Leoni is Curator of Islamic Art at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. She specialises in the Islamic Middle East with a focus on the Persian-speaking world. Her interests include book arts; cross-cultural exchanges between the Islamic world, Europe and Asia; the history and circulation of technologies; and contemporary art from the Middle East.…

With Ronie Parciack (Tel Aviv), Tel Aviv Exchange Fellowship 2019.

Professor Iain Gardner is Professor of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney. He was trained in early Christian literature and the history of religions at the University of Manchester, undertaking research work on ancient manuscripts in Berlin and Vienna, and had extensive experience teaching in both Britain and Western Australia before coming to…

Dr Siavush Randjbar-Daemi is Lecturer in Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of St Andrews. His core research interests lie in the evolution of the state in modern and contemporary Iran, and the contribution to the public sphere, particularly in periods of relative pluralism, such as the early 1950s or 1979-1981, of a variety…

James Barr has worked in politics, at the Daily Telegraph, in the City, at the British Embassy in Paris, and is currently a visiting fellow at King's College, London. He read modern history at Oxford has travelled widely in the Middle East. His previous book, A Line in the Sand, is also available from Simon…

Mediæval History Seminar series The Postgraduate Mediæval History Seminar series is intended to provide a space for postgraduates at all stages (from MLitts to final year PhDs) to present ideas, discuss research issues, and get some practical experience before conferences, submissions, etc. Refreshments are provided, and after each session we adjourn to the speaker’s choice…