The 2007 Hamad Bin Khalifa Symposium
on Islamic Art Fellows

The Hamad Bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art strives to foster the development of an international community of researchers and scholars in Islamic art and cultures. The Hamad Bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art Fellowship provides financial support for conference attendance and provides recognition of serious scholars from diverse geographic and cultural areas including those from the less developed and less well-funded countries. Attendance at the Rivers of Paradise: Water in Islamic Art and Culture Symposium in Doha, Qatar is an opportunity for advanced students and other scholars to meet and interact with other scholars in Islamic art and culture from around the world. The Fellowship enables students and scholars to visit Doha, one of the fastest growing Islamic Art centers in the Middle East.

Fifteen scholars representing one dozen countries and a broad array of research interests have been awarded fellowships to attend the Second Biennial Hamad Bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art scheduled for November 4-6, 2007, at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar.

The fellows, whose specialties range from Islamic art history to water engineering, will receive full funding to attend the symposium, which is being held Nov. 4-6 at Education City in Doha, Qatar, one of the fastest growing centers of Islamic art in the Middle East. The theme of this year’s symposium, “Rivers of Paradise: Water in Islamic Art and Culture,” will explore the theme of water in Islamic lands from southern Europe to South Asia. Topics range from water supply and distribution to its role in religion and popular culture.

VCU School of the Arts, which co-hosts the symposium with VCU School of the Arts in Qatar, received more than 300 applications from 62 countries for the symposium’s fellowships. Applicants represented four continents (Africa, Asia, Europe and North America) and ranged from students in their early 20s to senior scholars in their 60s and 70s. Applicants included historians, art historians, architects, engineers and curators. Recipients ultimately selected for the fellowships are citizens of Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, India, Iran, Russia, Spain, Sudan, Turkey, Yemen and the United States.

The selection committee, headed by Sheila S. Blair, Ph.D., and Jonathan M. Bloom, Ph.D., shared holders of the Hamad Bin Khalifa Endowed Chair of Islamic Art at VCU, faced a difficult task in narrowing down the field of applicants.

“We were tremendously impressed with the range and seriousness of the 300 applicants for fellowships,” Blair and Bloom said. “They show that there is a worldwide thirst for knowledge about Islamic art.”

Abdurrahman Muhammad Al-Haddad
Engineer-consultant for the Social Fund for Development & Sanaa Municipality, Traditional Garden Revitalization Project Officer and Advisor
Team member of the WaDImena Program research project “Building on Indigenous Knowledge for Water Demand Management in Yemen: the Enhancement of Traditional Garden Irrigation with Mosque Greywater” www.idrc.ca/wadimena
Citizen of Yemen

Esameddin Alhadi
Visiting Instructor, Department of African and Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
Ph.D. candidate, Cultural studies program, College of Education, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio
Specialist in Islamic Archeology and in the use of art collections to promote teachers’ professional development
Citizen of Sudan

Dr. Tahar Bellal
Department of architecture, University Ferhat Abbas, Sétif, Algeria
Architect and Specialist in Berber housing
Citizen of Algeria

Dr. B. Deniz Calis-Kural
Bahcesehir University, Faculty of architecture, Istanbul, Turkey
Architect and specialist in Ottoman garden and landscape traditions
Citizen of Turkey

Dr. Michael  Decker
Maroulis Professor of Byzantine History and Orthodox Religion Assistant Professor, Byzantine History, University of South Florida-Tampa, Florida
Specialist in Byzantium, Late Antique and Early Medieval Mediterranean Archaeology and History
In press: Tilling the Hateful Earth: Agriculture in the Early Byzantine East.  Oxford University Press, Oxford Byzantine Monograph Series
Citizen of USA

Mohammad Gharipour
Visiting Lecturer, Southern Polytechnic State University, Marietta
Ph.D. candidate, History, Theory, and Criticism in Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology
Specialist in Persianate Architecture and Garden Design
Citizen of Iran

Abu Khaled Mohammad Khademul Haque
Ph.D. student, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi
 Assistant Professor, Dept. of Islamic History and Culture, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Specialist in Islamic art and Archaeology
Citizen of Bangladesh

Dr. Katherine Hoffman
Professor and Chairperson, Fine Arts Department, St. Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire
Specialist in cross-cultural impact of Islamic art on western art
Citizen of USA

Riyaz Latif
Ph.D. student, Department of Art History, University of Minnesota
Architect and specialist in North African architecture
Citizen of India

Dr. Vivian Mann
Morris and Eva Feld Chair in Judaica, The Jewish Museum, New York
Advisor, Master of Arts Program in Jewish Art & Material Culture,Graduate School, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York
Specialist in Jewish art in Islamic lands
Citizen of USA

Dr. Vigilio Martinez-Enamorado
University Complutense Madrid, and  University of Granada Research
Specialist in archeology of Malaga
Citizen of Spain

Alan Mikhail
PhD Candidate, Department of History, University of California, Berkeley
Specialist in irrigation in Ottoman Egypt
Joint citizen of Egypt and USA

Lawrence Nees
Professor, Department of Art History, University of Delaware
Specialist in Medieval art
Citizen of USA

Mimi Savitri
Lecturer, Archaeology Department, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Gadjah Mada University (Indonesia)
Specialist in Islamic archeology in Java
Citizen of Indonesia

Dr. Tatiana Starodub
Research Institute of Theory and History of Arts, Russian Academy of Fine Arts
Specialist in history of Medieval Islamic art and architecture
Citizen of Russia