Category Archives: Staff News

May 7 AFIKRA Salon at MIT to feature Aga Khan Collections Curator

Aga Khan Collections Curator Rami Alafandi will be presenting on the work of the Aga Khan Documentation Center and the Aga Khan Development Network in Vol. 6 of the afikra Boston salon on Sunday, May 7, at 6 pm in Room 3-133 on the MIT Campus. AFIKRA salons are in-person events held in cities worldwide that bring people together to learn about the histories and cultures of the Arab world. The salon is free and open to the public; registration is required.

Digital Interfaces Workshops on Documenting West African Heritage Held at MIT

The A3-Archnet Digital Interfaces Workshop week, hosted by the Aga Khan Documentation Center @ MIT, was held on 27 February – 3 March 2023 in the MIT Libraries. The Nigerian delegation was led by A3 founder Baba Oladeji and consisted of three winners of the A3-Archnet Writing Competition, Adefola Toye, Muhammed Madandola, Abdullah Ogunsetan. The Nigerian delegation received an orientation tour from Matt Saba, Interim Program Head and Michael Toler, Archnet Content Manager in the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT (AKDC@MIT), on Sunday, 26th February 2023. A fourth prize winner, Enwonwu Chiagozie Mitchelle, was unable to participate in […]

New Issue of OA Journal DISEGNARECON

Beniamino Polimeni, Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Hertfordshire and Michael A. Toler, ARCHNET Content Manager in the Aga Khan Documentation Center, have edited a new issue of DISEGNARECON, an Open Access Journal on Architecture and Cultural Heritage published by the University of L’Aquila in Italy. The issue, Vol. 15, No. 28, also available on Archnet, includes 7 articles on the theme of “Cities and Migration: Visual approaches to the challenges of increasingly diverse cities,” including two contributions by Polimeni and Toler, the introductory editorial and “On the Move: Michel Écochard, Migration, and Transdisciplinary Exchange in Urban Design.” […]

Book on Abbasid Palaces by Matt Saba Published

Impermanent Monuments, Lasting Legacies: The Dār al-Khilāfa of Samarra and Palace Building in Early Abbasid Iraq, by AKDC Visual Resources Librarian Matthew Saba, has recently been released by Reichert Publishing. The book, available in electronic or print format, was developed from Saba’s dissertation research offering a new interpretation of the palaces built by the Abbasid dynasty of Iraq at the apex of its political power from 750 to 900 A.D. As a case study, it focuses on the palace known as the Dār al-Khilāfa (Abode of the Caliphate), constructed in the city of Samarra, founded by the Abbasids in 836 […]

AKDC Program Head to edit volume on the topic of restitution of cultural artifacts

AKDC Program Head Dr. Nur Sobers-Khan is one of the curators of §RETURN, HEAL, REDISTRIBUTE, an upcoming issue of ROOTS§ROUTES a multilingual, independent quarterly magazine of visual culture published in Italy. The focus of the issue curated by Dr. Sobers-Khan, Domenico Sergi, Anna Chiara Cimoli and Giulia Grechi is Restitution, an important and timely issue in contemporary museum practice, the debate of which often serves to expose “deeply rooted colonial epistemologies.” In Europe and the US, “one of the most frequent objections to restitution is the weak scientific infrastructure of the communities where objects would be returned,” a premise that […]

AKDC Staff Contribute to New Book on the Religious Architecture of Islam

Matt Saba (Visual Resources Librarian at AKDC) and Michael Toler (Archnet Content Manager) have contributed two essays to The Religious Architecture of Islam, an encyclopedic, multi-author study of mosques, madrasas, saints’ shrines, and funerary architecture associated with the religion of Islam. The book aims to be global in scale, and its first volume—published in November 2021—covers Asia and Australia, while a forthcoming volume will cover Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The two-volume series is published by Brepols and edited by Hasan-Uddin Khan and Kathryn Moore. Matt contributed an essay on funerary architecture in Iraq under the Abbasids and their successor […]

CFP: Cities and Migration: Visual approaches to the challenges of increasingly diverse cities

Beniamino Polimeni, Lecturer in Architecture at the Leicester School of Architecture at De Montfort University and Michael A. Toler, Archnet Content Manager in AKDC@MIT, will be guest editors of DISEGNARECON ISSUE Vol 15, No 28 (2022) on the topic of “Cities and Migration: Visual approaches to the challenges of increasingly diverse cities.” According to the Call for Papers, the issue: will highlight new architectural and landscape/urban planning responses on migration, including strategies for reinforcing social inclusion and urban diversity. Priority will be given to papers based on an argument that analyses visual and material culture; look at issues of migration […]

AKDC Staff participating in panel on Digital Humanities + Islamic Visual Culture in the annual conference of the College Art Association

Matt Saba, AKDC Visual Resources Librarian, a and Glaire Anderson, Senior Lecturer in Islamic Art at the University of Edinburgh, have organized and will chair a panel on Digital Humanities + Islamic Visual Culture for the 109th Annual Conference of the College Art Association to be held online February 10-13, 2021. The panel is sponsored by the Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA). The panel includes 4 presentations: “Soft Eyes: Software’s Visualities and Islamic Art History in the Digital Age” by Hussein Keshani, The University of British Columbia “Animating an Amulet: 3D Modeling, Materiality, and a Medieval Arabic Amulet Scroll” […]

Archnet Content Manager invited to participate in “Preserving and conveying memory to foster Alterity.”

Michael Toler, Archnet Content Manager, has been invited to participate in a webinar, “Préserver et transmettre la mémoire pour ancre l’Altérité,” organized by the Ta’aruf Center of the Rabita Mohammedia Al Ulema in Morocco. The event takes place January 25-28, is part of a continuing dialogue on “how to resolve a number of tensions which have ossified the dialogue between cultures and religions. The issues around memory – how to preserve it and pass it on to the next generations – seem to be a major challenge for our societies in terms of peacebuilding and encouraging open-mindedness to the notion […]

AKDC to offer Introduction to Islamic Calligraphy

In collaboration with calligrapher and graphic designer Sangeetha Kowsik, AKDC@MIT will offer an introductory workshop on “Arabic Calligraphy: An Artistic Journey from Kufic to Contemporary Design,” January 14, 2021 from 2 to 4 PM EST, during MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP). The workshop introduces a brief history of Arabic calligraphy, a tradition whose practice spans more than one thousand years and continues today, where it is globally recognized for its unique aesthetics of geometric proportion and sinuous curve. In the first part of this workshop, the most important of the classical Arabic scripts are introduced through famous examples of artworks, […]