Our Team
Prof. Andrew Peacock
Project principal investigator
Ursula Sims-Williams
Project co-investigator
Lead Curator (Persian collections)
The British Library
Affiliated Researcher
The Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge
Trustee and Honorary Librarian
The Ancient India and Iran Trust, Cambridge.
Research interests: Material cultures of Islamic and Pre-Islamic Iran, India and Central Asia, with a special interest in Zoroastrianism and manuscript collection history.
Recent publications:
1. ‘Or.6810: The Afterlife of a Manuscript.’ in Barbara Brend, Treasures of Herat: Two Manuscripts of the Khamsah of Nizami in the British Library (London: Gingko, 2022)
2. Alexander the Great: the making of a myth, co-edited with Richard Stoneman (London: British Library, 2022).
3. ‘The official and personal seals of Tipu Sultan of Mysore.’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (2021).
4. ‘Collections within collections: an analysis of Tipu Sultan’s Library.’ Iran (2021).
Dr. Mahmood Alam
Project co-investigator
Assistant Professor of Persian
The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad
A recipient of the UK-Visiting Nehru Trust and Charles Wallace India Trust fellowships for 2015-16
Areas of expertise: Indo-Persian literature, Persian manuscript studies, codicology
Ali Shapouran
Research assistant
PhD Candidate, School of History, University of St Andrews
Research interests: Medieval and early modern Persianate world, Islamicate manuscripts, Persian literature, cultural interaction and evolution
