Funding Opportunities for Researchers in Middle Eastern Studies at the British International Research Institutes (BIRI): BIAA, BIPS, BISI and CBRL

Event co-organised by BRISMES, BIAA, BIPS, BISI and CBRL.

The webinar is open to all but registration is required.

The British International Research Institutes (BIRI) are global research partners in the arts, humanities and social sciences. The BIRI comprise nine institutes that are hubs in a network of regional contacts and activities that cover, among other, the Mediterranean, Turkey, the Middle East, Iran and Central Asia. We are very pleased to announce that for our next webinar, we will hear from myriad BIRI institutions about their funding and scholarship opportunities for students and scholars who are invested in learning about our region:

• The British Institute at Ankara (BIAA), founded in 1947, supports, enables and encourages research in Türkiye and the Black Sea region across the arts, humanities and social sciences. BIAA supports and generates research across a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, urban planning, politics, history, sociology and art history, and across historical periods from the Neolithic through to the Byzantine, Ottoman and contemporary eras. BIAA is represented by Dr Peter Cherry.
• The Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) is a learned society working to advance public education on the Levant through promoting and disseminating research in the humanities, social sciences and related subjects, on and in Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Cyprus. CBRL is represented by Dr Kamal Badreshany.
• The British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS) is the UK’s foremost learned society dedicated to promoting and supporting scholarship, humanities and social sciences research, and research excellence on all aspects of Iran and the wider Persianate world, and to increasing public understanding and knowledge of this region. BIPS is represented by Dr Shabnam Holliday.
• The British Institute for the Study of Iraq (BISI) supports the study of Iraq, from prehistoric times to the present, including social sciences research on modern and contemporary Iraq. BISI launched its Visiting Iraqi Scholarship programme in 2005, in order to offer Iraqi academics and heritage professionals with the opportunity to undertake short periods of research at UK partner institutions (universities, museums and libraries). BISI is represented by Ali Khadr.

About the Speakers

Dr Peter Cherry is Assistant Director at the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA). He is the author of  Muslim Masculinities in Literature and Film: Transcultural Identity and Migration in Britain  (London: Bloomsbury, 2021). With Dr Işılay Gürsu (BIAA), he co-hosts the BIAA’s Podcast Heritage Türkiye. Peter holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh. 

Martyn Weeds is Director of Development, Communications and Operations at the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA), one of the British International Research Institutes (BIRI) supported by the British Academy.  Martyn has been involved in several joint-BIRI initiatives, notably the BIRI Sustainable Water Management Initiative, the first interdisciplinary conference to be organised collectively by the BIRI, and development of the ‘BIRI Manifesto’.  In addition to his work for the BIAA, Martyn is Executive Director of the UK-St Helena Heritage Trust and Secretary of the British Association for Near Eastern Archaeology (BANEA).

Dr Kamal Badreshany is a CBRL Trustee and the Chair or our Research sub-committee. He leads the Durham Archaeomaterials Research Centre (DARC), an analytical research facility based in the Department of Archaeology that offers advanced chemical and materials analysis for academia and industry. 

Dr Rosalind Wade has been a member of BISI since 1973. She has worked on the Ashmolean Museum’s extension in 2006 and catalogued the British Museum and V&A’s Herzfeld Samarra collection from 2013, which was a recipient of a BISI pilot scholarship. Dr Wade serves as Chair of BISI’s Trustees. 

Dr Shabnam Holliday is the current Research Director and Chair of the Research and Publications Committee at the British Institute of Persian Studies. She is Associate Professor in International Relations at the University of Plymouth. Her research focuses on Iran’s relationship with the international and decentering the discipline of International Relations (IR) through the case of Iran.

Dr Robert Steele is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences. He has a PhD from the University of Exeter and has held fellowships at UCLA and LSE. He is an Iran specialist and widely published. His latest publication Pahlavi Iran’s Relations with Africa: Cultural and Political Connections in the Cold War is published by Cambridge University Press, 2024.