Archie Williams

Archie is a recent History graduate of the University of Cambridge, where his undergraduate dissertation argued that the illustrative programme of the 1648 Windsor Shahnama MS Homes 151 (A/6) may be read as an allegory on centre-province relations in late Safavid Persia. In addition to using the Royal Collection archives, his dissertation drew on images and information obtained from the the Shahnama Project website, and benefitted greatly from the advice and support of Dr Firuza Melville. He is currently studying for an MPhil in Islamic Art and Architecture at the Khalili Research Centre at Oxford University, where his work is focussed on North and Subsaharan Africa. As such, he enjoyed his internship at the Shahnama Centre as an opportunity to reconnect with the Persian material which first sparked his interest in Islamic art. 

While an intern here in January 2021, Archie wrote content for the website describing some of the manuscripts donated to the centre. He will return later in the year to catalogue the Russian-language books in the centre's library. In later life he wants to work in heritage management, so he particularly enjoyed working as part of an organisation promoting international co-operation to preserve, document, and engage with Iranian culture. With UNESCO's recent decision to register miniature painting as protected 'intangible heritage', he hopes that the Shahnama Centre's work goes some way towards defining heritage in terms of practices and values rather than just inert objects. 

Here is Archie's essay "The Cartoonist and the Demon-King: How the Shahnameh became Wartime Propaganda", which he prepared working as intern at the Centre: http://persian.pem.cam.ac.uk/sites/persian.pem.cam.ac.uk/files/uploads/wysiwyg/Kem%27s%20Wartime%20Shahnama%20Cartoons.pdf