Collaborators

Dr. Chagnon has previously held curatorial posts at the Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and Japan Society, and served in curatorial capacities for exhibitions at New-York Historical Society and Asia Society Museum.

In addition to curatorial and museum work, Dr. Chagnon has substantial teaching experience, including a graduate seminar on "Critical Approaches to Persianate Painting" at Columbia University (Spring 2019); a master-class series on Islamic manuscripts at the New York Public Library (2018); and surveys of Islamic art at City College of New York (2009-10), Montclair State University, New Jersey (2009), and the College of New Rochelle, New York (2008).

Professor Emon is Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies, where he helps research teams incubate large scale research projects that have the capacity to recalibrate both academic and public debates on Islam and Muslims.

Dr. Kana’an’s primary research focuses on the Intersections between art, artists, art production and law in historical and contemporary contexts. She uses archival, textual and field-based research in her work, and has conducted research in Jordan, Palestine, Turkey, Yemen, Oman, East Africa, Egypt and Syria. In theoretical terms, her research engages with Bruno Latour’s object-networks and Henri Lefebvre’s production of space, among other frameworks. Her publications address questions about the formation and meanings of mosque architecture, metalwork and civic space in pre-modern Muslim societies.

Dr. Mostafa has held positions at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Kansas and the Kunsthistorisches Institute in Florence. Her research explores the formation of Islamic architecture through the lens of early Islamic sectarianism and governance and the intersections of politics, the sacred and architecture. A focus of her research is the interface of Islam with late antiquity, Christianity and Judaism through commemorative architecture, pilgrimage and ritual practice. Her two most recent projects explore Davidic commemoration in Jerusalem throughout the Islamic Medieval period and the spatial repertoires of Nile veneration in Medieval Cairo.

Fahmida’s role includes leading strategic acquisitions, developing public programs and exhibitions, and further engaging the Islamic community in Toronto and across Canada. Fahmida joined the ROM from the British Museum where she was Phyllis Bishop Curator for the Modern Middle East. In that position, Fahmida was responsible for the Museum’s collection of ethnographic objects and textiles from the Middle East and Central Asia. Previously, Fahmida has also been a consultant with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture during the development phase of the Aga Khan Museum.

Raised in Toronto, Fahmida holds a degree in Islamic and Religious Studies from the University of Toronto, and Masters and Doctoral degrees in Islamic Art and Archaeology from Oxford University. She completed the Graduate Programme in Islamic Studies and Humanities at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, UK.

Sanniah's doctoral research focuses on textiles from South Asia and particularly the impact of digital printing, machine-replication, and mass-production on modern and contemporary 'folk' crafts in Pakistan. Central to her research are questions of how artisans and craft communities respond to changing markets, movements across networks of craft exchange, differing forms of gendered craft labor, textiles as markers of ethnicity and nationality, and concerns over the ‘indigeneity’ of the handmade. For her dissertation, Sanniah is studying the "Ajrak," a block-printed and resist dyed rectangular cotton textile. By considering its handmade forms and mass-produced representations as a markers of certain ethnicity, the Ajrak is juxtaposed as a political tool of representation with its high-fashion counterpart amidst global concerns around craft-preservation.