This evening, dedicated to the late Professor David Stronach, will focus on BIPS’s contribution to Iranian archaeology.
First, there will be a short film about Professor Stronach’s major excavations in Iran during the 1960s and 1970s after which a panel comprising Professor Michael Roaf, Professor Rémy Boucharlat, Dr Ali Mousavi and Dr Cameron Petrie, chaired by Dr Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, will discuss the impact of David Stronach’s work on Iranian archaeology and archaeologists now and then.
The panel discussion will be followed by a reception.
The panel discussion will be streamed on Zoom and the BIPS Facebook page. To attend the panel discussion remotely, please use the Register button or join on Facebook on the day.
A few places have been set aside for members to join the event in person. Anyone wishing to attend should contact BIPS Executive Officer, Louise Hosking. Places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
For more information about the 60th Anniversary, visit the Anniversary page.
Speakers Information
Michael Roaf first visited Iran in 1967 to work with David Stronach on the excavations at Tepe Nush-i Jan. As a result he changed his studies from Mathematics to Near Eastern Archaeology. He wrote his doctoral thesis on Sculptures and Sculptors at Persepolis.
He was Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq and has excavated in many countries of the Middle East. From 1995 to 2012 he was Professor for Near Eastern Archaeology in Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany.
Rémy Boucharlat is an archaeologist, Emeritus Senior Researcher at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at Université de Lyon, France).
His research has mainly focused on the history and archaeology of the Great Empires in Iran, from the Achaemenids to the Sassanids. In the 1970s, he excavated in Iran, especially in Susa and directed excavations in the United Arab Emirates in the 1980s and later in Central Asia. Between 1999-2009, he conducted surveys and rescue excavations in the Pasargadae and Persepolis areas. He has been the director of the French Institute of Research in Tehran, devoted to Social Sciences and the director of the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies within the University of Lyon.
Since ca. 2000, he has been the co-editor of two journals on the Iranian World, Studia Iranica and Abstracta Iranica. He co-authored two books, co-edited conferences and wrote some 140 papers: excavation reports, studies on ancient sites and their landscape, urbanism and ancient irrigation techniques.
Ali Mousavi studied in Lyon, France, and took his B.A. in Art History, and his M.A. in Archaeology from the University of Lyon, France. He obtained his Ph.D. in Near Eastern archaeology from the University of California, Berkeley. He excavated in France, Turkey, and Iran, and contributed to the nomination of a number of archaeological sites and monuments on the World Heritage List of UNESCO.
He is the author of Persepolis: Discovery and Afterlife of a World Wonder, and, with David Stronach, co-edited Ancient Iran from the Air. He has published on various aspects of Iranian art and archaeology, and holds a particular interest in the archaeology of Iranian Empires, from the Achaemenids to the Sasanians, and the history of archaeology in Iran and the Near East.
He worked as a curator of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 2006 to 2013. He directed three seasons of archaeological excavations at the site of Pasargadae. He is now the director of the Archaeological Gazetteer of Iran project in the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Cameron Petrie conducts research on the archaeology of Iran, Pakistan and India, and has been with the Department of Archaeology in Cambridge since 2005, when he became the Research Councils UK Fellow in South Asian and Iranian Archaeology.
He was appointed as a Lecturer in 2010, Senior Lecturer in 2014 and Reader in 2016. Prior to starting in Cambridge, he was the Katherine and Leonard Woolley Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College Oxford (2003-2006) and was appointed to that position after finishing his PhD at the University of Sydney (1998-2002).
Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis obtained her PhD from University College London on Parthian art. She was Joint Editor of the Journal IRAN (1983-2003), Secretary of BIPS (1998-2003), President of BIPS (2006-2011) and Secretary of the Royal Numismatic Society (2005-2010). She is a member of the Academic Committee of the Iran Heritage Foundation (IHF). She is Vice-President of BIPS.
She was appointed Curator of Middle Eastern Coins in the Department of Coins and Medals, The British Museum in 2005. With Dr Michael Alram, Vice-President of the Austrian Academy in Vienna, she is the Joint Director of the International Parthian Coin Project, The Sylloge Nummorum Parthicorum (SNP).
She has published extensively on ancient Persian coins, art and culture and is particularly interested in religious and royal iconography. She has curated a series of small exhibitions at the British Museum and also contributed to the British Museum’s Cyrus Cylinder exhibition in Tehran, Houston and Mumbai.