Peter Frankopan to give Sir Harold Bailey Memorial Lecture

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This year’s Bailey Memorial Lecture will be given by Peter Frankopan on Wednesday 13th December 2017 at 5pm at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Downing Street Cambridge CB2 3ER. Organised by the Ancient India and Iran Trust in conjunction with the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, this biennial event commemorates the life and work of our founding trustee the Iranianist and Sanskritist Sir Harold Walter Bailey. Peter’s talk is entitled “Sir Harold Bailey and the Content of Indian, Iranian and Asian Studies“. Peter Frankopan studied History at …

AIIT Library’s New Bookstacks in the Basement

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Following a summer of building works, the library at the AIIT has a new basement book store, complete with new rolling bookstacks, providing over 120 linear metres of much needed archival storage space.  The conversion of our former laundry room into a purpose-built collections store also included the removal of our behemoth of a boiler and the installation of a new efficient heating system for the trust. We would like to thank our visitors over the summer and particularly our regular readers and visiting scholars for their patience and flexible …

AIIT Friday 10 November Lecture: Ursula Sims-Williams ‘Investigating the Library of Tipu Sultan of Mysore’

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This week’s lecture at 5.30pm on Friday November 10th at the AIIT: Ursula Sims-Williams (British Library) ‘Investigating the library of Tipu Sultan of Mysore’.  All welcome. Refreshments from 5pm. Tipu Sultan, ruler of Mysore from 1782 until his death at Seringapatam in 1799, remains one of the most charismatic figures of South Asian history. Simultaneously idolised and denigrated, this talk attempts a more nuanced interpretation by examining the contents of his library of which approximately 500 manuscripts form part of the Arabic and Persian collections at the British Library. Ursula …

The Ancient India & Iran Trust

AIIT Lecture – Friday 3 November: Mark Elliott on curating ‘Another India’ exhibition at MAA, Cambridge

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This week’s lecture at 5.30pm on Friday November 3rd at the AIIT: Mark Elliott (MAA, Cambridge) ‘Curating Another India: object histories and contemporary voices’ All welcome. Refreshments from 5pm The Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology (MAA) cares for rich and eclectic collections of artefacts and images from India and South Asia, which have been largely unresearched in recent decades. The results of archaeological excavation, ethnographic fieldwork, colonial administration, missionary expeditions, travel or military operations, what these collections have are important stories to tell about the people who made and used …

Samuel Lieu

Sam Lieu elected President of Union Académique Internationale

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Congratulations to AIIT Trustee Sam Lieu on being elected President of the International Union of Academies/ Union Académique Internationale (UAI) for the four year period 2017- 2021. Sam, Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at Macquarie University, Sydney, has been a regular representative at the UAI for the Australian Academy of the Humanities. We hope his new responsibilities will not impact too seriously on his time at the Ancient India and Iran Trust!