While not every talk is recorded, video recordings are linked when available.
SPRING 2026
Tuesday, February 10, 2026 POSTPONED12:00 New York / 17:00 London / 20:00 Istanbul / 20:30 Tehran
Kianoosh Motaghedi (Independent Scholar and Artist)
The Origin of Archaism in Pictorial Persepolis Carpets of the Qajar Era
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
12:00 New York / 17:00 London / 19:00 Istanbul
Ryan Mitchell (Temple University)
Ambition and Spectacle: The Architectural Patronage of Mehmed Ali Pasha of Egypt
Special Session: Digital Resource Discussion
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
12:00 New York / 17:00 London / 19:00 Istanbul
Mehrnoush Soroush (University of Chicago) and Sepideh Maziar (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)
Middle East Cultural Heritage at Risk in Armed Conflict
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
12:00 New York / 17:00 London / 19:00 Istanbul
Claire Dillon (Columbia University)
Sampling the Sacred: Khaled Sabsabi’s Hip Hop Praxis
Tuesday, April 7, 2026
12:00 New York / 17:00 London / 19:00 Istanbul
Nancy Micklewright (Independent Scholar)
Finding the Elusive Fashion Stories of Enslaved Women in Late Ottoman Istanbul
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
09:00 Los Angeles / 12:00 New York / 16:00 London / 19:00 Istanbul
Keelan Overton (Independent Scholar)
The Emamzadeh Yahya at Varamin: An Online Exhibition of an Iranian Shrine
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
12:00 New York / 16:00 London / 19:00 Istanbul
Hallie Swanson (NYU London)
Unity and Multiplicity: Deccani Workshop Painting and the Sufi Romance
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
12:00 New York / 17:00 London / 20:00 Istanbul
Xinyu Liang (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Framing Time and Space in Transcultural Dialogue: The Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh and the “Pictorial Turn” in Ilkhanid Mongol Book Art
FALL 2025
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
12:00 New York / 17:00 London / 20:00 Istanbul
Amanda Caterina Leong (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Recovering the Many Faces of Female Javanmardi in the Illustrated Manuscripts of the Premodern Persianate World (945-1800)
Tuesday, November 4, 2025
12:00 Boston and New York / 17:00 London / 20:00 Istanbul
Sarah Molina (Harvard University)
Carpeting Safavid Shrines
Tuesday, October 21, 2025
12:00 New York / 17:00 London / 18:00 Munich / 19:00 Istanbul
Charlotte Bank (Institut für Kunstgeschichte, LMU München)
Queering Islamic Art: Expressions of Gender Diversity and Critique of Sexual Normativity in Contemporary Art of the Middle East
Tuesday, September 23, 2025
12:00 New York / 17:00 London / 18:00 Berlin / 19:00 Istanbul
Franziska Kabelitz (Museum für Islamische Kunst),
Berlin – Toronto – Rome: Mughal Medallion Genealogies Revisited
Tuesday, September 9, 2025
11:00 Detroit and New York / 16:00 London / 18:00 Istanbul
Samira Fathi (Michigan State University)
Literary Culture and Urban Revival in Early Qajar Isfahan
SPRING 2025
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Carol Bier (Center for Islamic Studies, Graduate Theological Union)
Geometry in Islamic Art: Number, Shape, and the Nature of Space
Tuesday, March 25, 2025 [postponed from Tuesday, November 19, 2024]
Amber Elisabeth Peters (Ca’Foscari University)
The Ocean in Early-Modern South Asian Art
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Atri Hatef Naiemi (University of British Columbia)
Ilkhanid Capital Cities: Transcultural Interactions
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Giorgia M. Maffioli Brigatti (Pembroke College, University of Cambridge)
Poetics and Politics of Fragrance: An Olfactory Approach to Safavid Paintings
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Jessica Holland (British School at Athens)
David Maina (British Institute of East Africa)
Anne Marie Williamson (British Institute for Libyan and Northern African Studies)
Using Linked Open Data to Make Visible Links between Islamic Heritage Collections across the British International Research Institutes Network
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Onür Ozturk (Columbia College Chicago)
Analyzing Ottoman Külliye Architecture through the Climate Lens: the Little Ice Age and the Yeni Valide Mosque
FALL 2024
Tuesday, December 10, 2024 [postponed from August 20]
Soukaina Aboulaoula (Independent Curator)
Camille Lévy Sarfati (Independent Curator)
Caroline Angle Maguire (University of Maryland, College Park)
Ashley Miller (University of Michigan Museum of Art)
Elizabeth Rauh (American University of Cairo)
Rasha Salti (Independent Curator)
A Roundtable Discussion:
Modernism and Cultural Heritage in the SWANA Region: Curatorial Interventions
Tuesday, December 3, 2024
Ahmad Rafiei (Toledo Museum of Art)
Beyond Allegory to Prosody: Unraveling Reza Abbasi’s Artistic Odyssey Through Yul Quli Beg’s Influence
Tuesday, November 12, 2024 [postponed from November 5]
Sinem Casale (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities)
Gifts in the Age of Empire: Ottoman-Safavid Cultural Exchange, 1500-1639
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
Mahnam Najafi (Shahid Beheshti University)
The Evolution of Squares in Qajar Tehran: A Study of Urban and Social Changes
Tuesday, October 22, 2024 [Postponed from Tuesday, September 3, 2024]
Özlem Yıldız (Temple University)
Bringing the Heavenly Down to Earth: Nature, Bodies, and Objects as Symbols of the Divine in the Illustrated Qisas al-Anbiya Manuscripts from the Sixteenth-Century
Tuesday, October 1, 2024
Heba Mostafa (University of Toronto)
Architecture of Anxiety: Body Politics and the Formation of Islamic Architecture
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
[Please note this talk will be one hour earlier than usual, at 11:00 am NYC]
Muhammad Hadi bin Osni (Community Researcher, My Community Limited)
Domes and Minarets of Modernity: Governance and Islamic Architecture in Singapore’s Mosque Building Fund (1977-1983)
SPRING 2024
Friday, May 24, 2024
Sarah Slingluff (University of Edinburgh) and Deniz Vural (University of
Edinburgh)
Can Scholars of Islamic Art Help Decolonize Video Games?: The Case of Assassin’s Creed Mirage
Friday, May 3, 2024
Mahroo Moosavi (Max-Planck Institute, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz; Museum of Islamic Art, Pergamon Museum, Berlin)
The Garden of Laylī-u-Majnūn’s Phantasma: Temporal Architectonics in the Illustrations of a Bodleian Copy of the Khamsa of Niẓāmī
Friday, April 19, 2024
Haleh Hajyasini (Art University of Tehran)
Digitizing the Adel Farhangi Photographic Archive of Iran’s Historical Monuments
Friday, April 5, 2024
Farshid Emami (Rice University)
Inhabiting a Cosmopolis: Urban Quarters and Civic Selves in Safavid Isfahan
Friday, March 22, 2024
Elizabeth Rodini (Vartan Gregorian Center for Research in the Humanities, New York Public Library)
As the World Turns: The On-Going Geopolitics of Gentile Bellini’s Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II
Friday, March 8, 2024
Mikael Muehlbauer (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
The Fatimid Mausoleum at Qus (Upper Egypt) and Antiochene Cosmography
Friday, February 23, 2024
Ana Marija Grbanovic (University of Bamberg)
Patterns and Constellations of Ilkhanid Stucco Production
Friday, February 9, 2024
Mogheesa Hasnain Rajput (Independent Researcher)
Captive Memories: The Mosque of Wünsdorf
Friday, January 26, 2024
Marianna Shreve Simpson (Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania)
Master of the Minute: ʿAbdullah al-Shirazi, Artistic Identity and Art Historical
Perception
FALL 2023
Friday, December 1, 2023
Veronika Poier (University of Vienna)
Mediation between Architecture, Word, and Image: The Inscriptions of the Green Complex (1419-1424) for Sultan Mehmed I in Bursa
Friday, November 17, 2023
Alexandra Solovyev (University of Oxford)
Photographing Ephesus in the Railway Age
Friday, November 3, 2023
Meriem Ben Ammar (University of Cagliari)
The Study of the Sābāṭ in the Islamic City: Relationships between Architecture and Jurisprudence
Friday, October 20, 2023
Kianoosh Motaghedi (Independent Scholar, Tehran)
The Glory of European Narratives and Themes in Qajar Tiles from Nineteenth-Century Palaces of Tehran
Friday, October 6, 2023
Onur Öztürk (Columbia College Chicago)
What Happened to Chicago’s Only Islamic Art Gallery? Reflections on Recent Curatorial Decisions at the Art Institute of Chicago
Friday, September 22, 2023
Péter Nagy (Qatar Museums, Doha)
Historical Consciousness in Architectural Patronage: The Tradition of Royal Tombs in Morocco
Friday, September 8, 2023
Negar Habibi (University of Geneva)
Pozzi’s Persian Collection in Geneva: A History of Collecting
SPRING 2023
Friday, May 19, 2023
Semra Horuz (MIT)
Picturing Modernity, History, and Mobility: Visuality in Late Ottoman Travelogues on Europe
Friday, May 5, 2023
Suzanne Compagnon (University of Vienna)
Designing clothed figures in early eighteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul
Friday, April 21, 2023
Sarah Slingluff (University of Edinburgh)
A Monumental Year: Codifying Christian Architectural History in the Spanish Republic’s Decree of June 3, 1931
Friday, April 7, 2023
Günseli Gürel (University of Oxford)
Picturing Antiquities at the Ottoman Court, 1595-1603
Friday, March 24, 2023
Zohreh Soltani (Ithaca College)
Speculative Heritage: Azadi Tower as the Monument of Solidarity in Contemporary Iran
Friday, March 10, 2023
Patricia Blessing (Princeton University)
Architecture and Material Politics in the Fifteenth-century Ottoman Empire
Friday, February 24, 2023
Mehran Qureshi (Islamic University of Science and Technology, Awantipora, Kashmir)
The Sultanate Period Gravestones of Mazar-i-Kalan and Mazar-i-Salatin, Kashmir
Friday, February 10, 2023
Pamela Karimi (University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth)
“Woman, Life, Freedom”: Art of Revolution in Five Acts
FALL 2021/Spring 2022
Tuesday, May 24, 2022
Deniz Karakaş (Tulane University)
A Curious Exchange between Builders and Physicians: Itineraries of Tasty Waters (mâ-i leziz) in Early Modern Istanbul
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
Gül Kale (Carleton University)
From Construction Sites to the Frontier: Mathematical Tools and Practitioners in the Ottoman Empire, 17th to 18th Century
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
Maryam Kheradmand (University of Religions and Denominations, Iran)
Emotions in Response to Artworks According to Ibn Sīnā’s Philosophy
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
Amanda Lazillo (Princeton University)
Illustrating Artisanship: Urdu Printed Manuals and Artisan Education in India
Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Nasser Rabbat (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Al-Maqrizi’s Notion of History
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
Feray Coşkun (Özyeğin University)
The Legacy of Early Islamic Memory in Istanbul: The Shrine of Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
Meriem Ben Ammar (University of Cagliari)
The Contribution of Hanafi Jurists to the Urban Domain of the Islamic City
Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Matthew Gilman (Columbia University)
The Immaterial Remains of Glassworking in Abbasid Baghdad
Tuesday, December 7, 2021
Thadeus Dowad (Northwestern University)
Ottoman Portraiture in the Age of Revolutions: Kapıdağlı Paints Selim III
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Carine Lemyre (University of St Andrews)
Le chemin de fer de Beyrouth à Damas: French Infrastructure, Political Control and Profit in Ottoman Syria
Tuesday, October 26, 2021
Ünver Rüstem (Johns Hopkins University)
In the Shadow of Gothic: Ottoman Mosque Architecture in Cyprus
FALL 2020/SPring 2021
Wednesday, June 23, 2021
Nicolas Roth (Harvard University)
Strange and Wonderful Structures: Architectural Description in Eighteenth-Century Urdu Literature
Wednesday, June 9, 2021
Reza Sheikh (Independent researcher)
“Putting the Shah in the Landscape” – a new book on Nasseredin Shah Qajar’s physician Dr. Joseph Désiré Tholozan (1820-1897) and his photo-albums kept at the Middle East Centre Archive – St Antony’s College – Oxford University
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
Juan de Lara (Asia House & The Institute of Archaeology, UCL, London)
‘Islamic Hellenism:’ The emergence of Islamic art in Arabia within the globalised culture of Late Antiquity
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Hakim Sameer Hamdani (Indian National Trust for Art & Cultural Heritage)
Islamic Religious Architecture of Kashmir: A Case of Syncretism and Regional Identity
Wednesday, April 28, 2021
Jaimee Comstock-Skipp (Leiden University)
Not a Shāh-nāma but a Khān-nāma: the Shībānī-nāma and Illustrated Historiographies at the Intersection of Abu’l-Khairid Uzbeks and Ottomans
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
Christopher Morse (Université du Luxembourg)
#AtHomeAtTheMuseum: Digital Culture in the Age of Decolonization
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
Zeinab Tamassoki (Shahid Beheshti University)
How a Persian Architectural Form Wore a European Identity: “Chapeau” as the Trendy Building Type in Iran (1785- 1925)
Wednesday, March 31, 2021
Sahar Hosseini (University of Pittsburgh)
The Invisible Lake of Sa’adat-Abad Complex and Architecture of Sensory Affect
Wednesday, March 17, 2021
Esther Voswinckel (German Orient Institute, Istanbul)
The Textile Belongings of a Sufi Saint in Istanbul
Wednesday, March 3, 2021
Inigo Almela (Alexander von Humboldt foundation)
Religious Architecture and Urban Development in Marrakech
Thursday, February 18, 2021
Nikolaos Vryzidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
Itinerant Objects, Naturalised Ornament: Islamic Material Culture in Later Byzantium
Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Abbey Stockstill (Southern Methodist University)
A Maghribi Mecca or Medina? The Mosque at Tinmal in Almohad Ritual Practice
Thursday, January 21, 2021
Side Emre (Texas A&M University)
From Ibn al-ʿArabi’s ‘Inshaʿ al-Dawaʾir’ to Muhyi’s ‘Daʾire-i Cihannüma’: Diagrammic Representations of a Distinctive Worldview in the Early Modern Ottoman World
Friday, January 15, 2021
Elizabeth Rauh (AUC)
Experiments in Eden: Midcentury Iraqi Artist Voyages into the Mesopotamian Marshlands
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Olga Nefedova (National Research University HSE, Moscow)
Three Monumental Murals for Baghdad: Reflections on Data from Mahmoud Sabri’s, Shams al-Din Faris’s, Ahmed al-Numan’s Years as Art Students in the USSR
Thursday, December 3, 2020
Kianoosh Motaghedi (Independent researcher, Tehran)
The Impact of Photography on Pictorial Qajar Tiles
Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Melis Taner (Ozyegin University) and Mahnaz Yousefzadeh (NYU)
Royal Ottoman Genealogies in the 16th Century: A Conversation about Recent Archival Finds
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Gwendolyn Collaço (LACMA)
Mapping Relationships between 17th c. Ottoman Costume Albums: Combining Digital Tools with Codicological Analysis to Construct a History of Collecting Trends
Thursday, October 8, 2020
Christiane Gruber (University of Michigan)
Engines of Prophecy: Materializing Muhammad in the Modern Islamic World
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Fuchsia Hart (University of Oxford)
Pilgrimage and Patronage: The Shrine of Imam Reza During the Reign of Fath ‘Ali Shah (1797-1834)
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Hilal Uğurlu (MEF University, Istanbul)
From Ceremony to Spectacle: Changing Perception of Hagia Sophia Through the Night of Decree (Layla’t-ul Kadr) Prayer Ceremonies
Spring/SUMMER 2020
August 13, 2020
Nora Lessersohn (University College London)
Slavery in Turkey: Analyzing Ottoman American Photographs from the Civil War Era
July 30, 2020
Negar Habibi (University of Geneva)
Occident, Occidentalism and Occidentalizing Art: A Persian Gaze at the Other
July 16, 2020
Stephennie Mulder (The University of Texas at Austin) and Yael Rice (Amherst College)
Contested Codices: The Legal, Ethical, & Moral Ramifications for the Sale of Islamic Manuscripts Today
July 2, 2020
Katie Hickerson (University of Chicago)
Anti-Blackness and Orientalist Fantasy: a War Photographer’s ‘Arabian Nights’
June 18, 2020
Sabiha Göloğlu (University of Vienna)
Printing and Painting, Sanctity and Protection: Representations of Mecca and Medina in Late Ottoman Visual Culture
June 4, 2020
Alex Dika Seggerman (Rutgers University)
‘An Entirely Personal Re-Creation’: K.A.C. Creswell’s Photographs of Islamic Architecture
May 21, 2020
Emily Neumeier (Temple University)
Constructing Orientalism in Interwar Florida
