Celebrating Women in Islamic Arts, Heritage and Culture
To celebrate, International Women’s Day we have selected women, who over the last 35 years have received grants from The Barakat Trust, or have guided the charity as a Trustee or an Academic Advisory Committee Member.
All the these women have made significants contributions in their chosen field of studies or to the future of The Barakat Trust.
Emily Shovelton
Emily Shovelton is a specialist in art from the Islamic world. She completed her PhD at SOAS on fifteenth-century Persian manuscripts from the Indian Sultanates. Since working on various projects at the British Museum she has tutored and lectured for courses at SOAS, Sotheby’s Institute of Art and the V&A Museum. She is currently a Research Associate at the Khalili [...]
Jaimee Comstock-Skipp
Jaimee Comstock-Skipp holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley in Near Eastern studies with a speciality in Arabic and Islamic civilizations (2009). She also holds an MA from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art (2012) and a second MA from The Courtauld Institute of Art in London (2015), where she studied book arts of [...]
Fatma Dahmani
Fatma Dahmani is a Barakat Trust postdoctoral fellow. Her original project focused solely on the Abbasid painting of the Caliphal palace of Samarra in Iraq and the extent to which it is an original piece. After having conducted further research into the broader city more things caught her eye. This included the paintings discovered in other parts of the city [...]
Dr Olga Bush
Dr Olga Bush is a scholar of Islamic art and architecture, whose research interests engage interdisciplinary methods and theoretical issues in a wide variety of topics ranging from the relationship of poetry to architecture in medieval Muslim aesthetics to nineteenth-century European and American Orientalism, to patronage of the arts in twentieth-century collecting practices. Currently, a Visiting Associate Professor of Islamic art [...]
Dr Zeynep Yürekli-Görkay
University Lecturer in Islamic Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford, UK. Interested in Islamic architecture; illustrated manuscripts; Sufi shrines; hagiography and historiography. 'Sufi Shrines under the Ottomans', in The Cambridge World History of Religious Architecture, ed. R. Etlin et al (Cambridge University Press).'Architectural Patronage and the Rise of the Ottomans', in The Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, ed. G. Necipolu [...]
Dr Mariam Rosser-Owen
Curator Middle East, Asian Department, Victoria & Albert Museum, UK curator responsible for te Arab World Collections at the V&A I specialise in the Islamic Mediterranean, especially al-Andalus and the Maghrib, but more generally I am interested in material culture connections around the Mediterranean during the medieval period. I am interested in how people commission works of art and [...]
Rima Alsafadi
Trustee Rima Al-Safadi was raised and educated in Damascus, Syria graduating with a BA in English Literature & Civilisation from Damascus University. Rima brings a diverse range of skills and experience to her role as Trustee, having founded and managing various businesses including ‘The Glass Art’, ‘Wow Flowers’ and ‘Dania Trading Establishment’, all of which are based in Jeddah, Saudi [...]
Rabya Alfadl
Trustee Rabya Alfadl was raised in Saudi Arabia and educated in the USA. She graduated in Psychology from Wellesley College, Massachusetts, and then completed a range of executive management and leadership courses and a Diploma in Behavioural Science at The London School of Economics. Having worked in marketing, brand management, research design and strategic development in both the public and [...]
Sara Alireza
Trustee Sara A. Alireza, was born in London, raised and educated in Saudi Arabia and the UK. Having graduated from The London School of Economics in industrial and business economics, Sara worked for Banque Baring Brothers, Switzerland as an analyst focusing on emerging markets. In 2005, she became a trustee of the Barakat Trust and has been responsible for fund [...]
Abir Dajani Tuqan
Trustee Abir Tuqan, was born in Jaffa, Palestine and educated initially in Switzerland and later England. A member of Middle Temple, Inns of Court School of Law, London, Tuqan was called to the Bar in 1973 and later specialized in Islamic Law at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), London University. Tuqan practiced Civil Law in London [...]
Shahnaz Bagherzade
Founder & Trustee Shahnaz Bagherzade was born in Iran, with a high school degree ‘Abitur’ from Germany. She holds an MPhil in Islamic Art & Architecture from Oxford University and supports various charities preserving the material culture of the Islamic world. She is a member of the Trust's Academic Advisory Committee and takes a lead strategic role on financial [...]
Hamida Alireza
Founder & Trustee Hamida A. Alireza, was born in USA, raised and educated in Switzerland. In 1987, she founded The Barakat Trust, together with Shahnaz Bagherzade and Tarik Alireza. She has overseen the Trust’s evolution, funding more than 500 students in a range of specialisations across the globe over 35 years. She is also a board member of The Barakat [...]
