Artists | The Cambridge Shahnama Centre for Persian Studies

Dr Firuza Melville

Director of Research

Dr Firuza Melville is a graduate (hons.) of St Petersburg University, where she received her PhD in Persian Literature, Art and Islamic Studies, and taught until 2005. After a term in Ann Arbor as a Fulbright Professor and a term in Princeton, in the Institut for Advanced Study, she left St Petersburg as an Associate Professor for Oxford where she was teaching Persian literature at the Faculty of Oriental Studies. Dr Melville was also a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford where she was Tutor, Supervisor and Director of Studies for all undergraduate and graduate students reading Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Egyptian, Armenian, and Syriac, as well as Curator of the Ferdawsi Library and the Persian manuscript collection. In 2010 she moved to Cambridge as Iran Heritage Foundation Research Fellow at Pembroke College. Since 2013 she is Director of Research of the Cambridge Shahnameh Centre for Persian Studies. She has been AMES Director of Studies in Pembroke College, Peterhouse and Corpus Christi.

Her research interests include mediaeval Persian book art, Persian literature, contemporary Iranian art, Russian cultural Orientalism in Central Asia and the Caucasus, especially in literature, visual art, opera and ballet, and the history of Russo-Persian diplomacy of the early Qajar period

Fatima Zahra Hassan

Fatima Zahra Hassan was educated at the National College of Art Lahore and Royal College of Art London where she got her MA with distinction and was then offered to do PhD in Visual Islamic and Traditional Arts from the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, London in 1997. Zahra, as she prefers to be called has taught since 1994, extensively on Indian, Mughal & Persian miniature painting and drawing...

Jonathan Pittock

Jonathan Pittock, owner of the company SKN3, is a web developer, programmer and artist. Jonathan has a history of working with computer game development but has also polished his skill to develop websites. Jonathan has many years of working with web technologies which he has utilised to create a platform for the Pembroke Shahnama Websites.

Sergey Feofanov

Sergey Feofanov worked as a senior stage and graphic designer for the editorial board at the Central Channel of the National Russian Television (programmes for children) between 1978 and 1987. He also worked as a stage designer at children’s theatres in Russia and abroad. In 1986 he was the director of the project design...

Veronica Shimanovskaya

Ms Veronica Shimanovskaya has a BA+MA in Architecture from the University of Architecture and Civil Engineering in St.Petersburg, an MA in Liberal Arts from Harvard University and an MA in Fine Art from the School of Arts and Digital Industries at the University of East London, where she is currently engaged in the Professional Doctorate programme.