Notes on Contributors
Samer Akkach
FAHA, is professor of architectural history and theory and Founding Director of the Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA) at the University of Adelaide. His main areas of expertise are in the fields of Islamic art and architecture, Islamic mysticism (Sufism), and Islamic intellectual history; and his interdisciplinary research interests extend to the socio-urban and cultural history of the Levant and the history of Islamic science in the early modern period. He has held several Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery grants and was a recipient of the ARC Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award (DORA). His major publications include the landmark Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam (2005), Islam and the Enlightenment (2007), Letters of a Sufi Scholar (2010), Intimate Invocations (2012), Damascene Diaries (2015), Istanbul Observatory (2017), and, most recently, Ê¿Ilm: Science, Religion, and Art in Islam (ed.) (2019).
James Bennett
is curator of Southeast Asian Art and Material Culture at the Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and was previously Curator of Asian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia. His major exhibitions and catalogue publications include Crescent Moon: Islamic Art and Civilisation of Southeast Asia (2005), Golden Journey: Japanese Art from Australian Collections (2009), Beneath the Winds: Masterpieces of Southeast Asian Art (2011), Realms of Wonder: Jain, Hindu and Islamic Art of India (2013), and Treasure Ships: Art in the Age of Spices (2014). He has recently completed doctoral research at the University of Adelaide examining the definitive elements appearing in the development of an Islamic aesthetic in Java during the Early Modern Era (16thâ19th c.) and is currently curating the permanent Southeast Asian display for the Museum & Art Galleryâs new Darwin city complex.
Sushma Griffin
is an art historian whose work focuses on the art, architecture, and visual cultures of South Asia, with an emphasis on the interface between Indian indigenous philosophies of vision, time, and space, and British Romantic aesthetics of landscape, in the specific context of the photography of the Indian built environment that emerged in the wake of the 1857 Indian insurgency. Her research interests range from the early modern historiography of the Indian region of the Deccan to twenty-first century digital cultures of Indian photography and film. Her work engages with historical as well as contemporary theories, discourses, and debates on the politics of representation and the reception of images. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Queensland (UQ), where she has been a Research Assistant at the UQ Node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. Her publications have appeared in TAASA Review as well as the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Artâs Asia Pacific Triennale 7 exhibition catalogue. She has also published a catalogue on the Nat Yuen Collection of Chinese Antiquities for the University of Queensland Art Museum.
Stephen Hirtenstein
is an editor for Encyclopaedia Islamica (Brill, in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London), and teaches Sufism and Sufi poetry at the University of Oxford. He is the chief editor of the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society (MIAS), a MIAS senior research fellow, and director of Anqa Publishing. Since 2001 he has been working on the MIAS archiving project cataloguing the historic manuscripts of Ibn ʿArabī. In addition to writing, he lectures internationally on Ibn ʿArabī and organises specialist study tours in Andalusia. His publications include Patterns of Contemplation (2021), The Alchemy of Human Happiness (2018), Divine Sayings (2004) and The Unlimited Mercifier (1999).
Virginia Hooker
FAHA, is emeritus professor at the Australian National University where she was formerly professor of Indonesian and Malay and is now a fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change, College of Asia and the Pacific. Her work for international editorial boards includes serving as an Associate Editor for Brillâs pioneering Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (EWIC). Her current research concerns modern and contemporary art in Indonesia. Among her recent publications are âReflections of the Soulâ (Inside Indonesia 112: AprâJun 2013); âMindful of Allah: Islam and the Visual Arts in Indonesia and Malaysiaâ (Artlink 33(1): March 2013); âWhen Laws Are Not Enough: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Intra-Religious Pluralism in Contemporary Indonesiaâ, in Gary Bell (ed.), Pluralism, Transnationalism and Culture in Asian Law (2017); and ââBy the Pen!â: Spreading Ê¿Ilm in Indonesia through Quranic Calligraphyâ, in Samer Akkach (ed.) Ê¿Ilm: Science, Religion and Art in Islam (2019). With Elly Kent and Caroline Turner she has edited and contributed to the volume Living Art: Indonesian Artists Engage Politics, Society and History from the Old to the New Millennium (forthcoming).
Sakina Nomanbhoy
is an art historian whose work investigates the cross-cultural links between Islamic and Renaissance art. She received her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and a Diploma of Languages (Arabic) from the University of Melbourne. She is currently undertaking an MA in the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her publications include âTalismanic Shirt: An Islamic Art Object from the Gallery of South Australiaâ, TAASA Review (2020); and âSoliman, an Emperor of Turkeyâ, University of Melbourne Collections (2018).
Shaha Parpia
is a visiting research fellow at the University of Adelaideâs Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA). She holds a PhD from the University of Adelaide and a masterâs degree in the history of Islamic art and architecture from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Her recent publications include âMughal Hunting Grounds: Landscape Manipulation and âGardenâ Associationâ (2016), âReordering Nature: Power Politics in the Mughal Shikargahâ (2018), âHunting Ground, Agricultural Land and the Forest: Sustainable Interdependency in Mughal India 1526â1707â (2018), and âThe Imperial Mughal Hunt: A Pursuit of Knowledgeâ (2019).
Ellen Philpott-Teo
is an architectural historian, educator, and craftsperson based in Singapore. Her research investigates the connections between architecture and textiles in Islamic cultures. She is a current PhD student at the University of Adelaide and is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Stipend and RTP Fee-Offset Scholarship. She has a Master of Architecture in Architectural History and Theory from McGill University. She teaches history and theory at the Glasgow School of Art Singapore, the National University of Singapore and Ngee Ann Polytechnic. She has exhibited her pottery and textiles in Singapore and her textile work in Japan. Her research process often involves the interplay of text and tactile research, as she shifts between laptop and loom, building words and woven textiles one row at a time.
Wendy M.K. Shaw
is professor of the art history of Islamic cultures at the Free University Berlin. Her work focuses on postcolonial art historiography and decolonial art history of the Islamic world and the modern Middle East. She completed her doctorate at UCLA in 1999. She is author of Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire (2003), Ottoman Painting: Reflections of Western Art from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic (2011), and Loving Writing: Techniques of Fact-based Communication at the University and Beyond (forthcoming). Her What is âIslamicâ Art: Between Religion and Perception (2019) has been awarded Honorable Mention for the 2020 Albert Hourani Book Prize of the Middle East Studies Association.