Advisory Board

Graeme Barker is Disney Professor of Archaeology Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow in the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. His extensive archaeological field experience includes directing multi-period and multi-disciplinary investigations in Jordan, Libya and currently at Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Elizabeth Fentress is a visiting professor at UCL who has directed major projects in Italy and North Africa. She is responsible for two important digital projects; the Fasti Online, and the North African Heritage Archives Network (NAHAN).
Kevin MacDonald holds a PhD from Cambridge (1994) and is Professor of African Archaeology at the UCL Institute of Archaeology and Programme Chair of UCL African Studies. He has directed fieldwork in Mali and Mauritania for more than 25 years, covering a wide range of subjects ranging from early agriculture, state formation and urban origins, to interdisciplinary work on historical archaeology and oral traditions. Since 2012 he has been involved with preserving and recording Mali’s archaeological heritage in a time of conflict.
Roger Matthews is Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Reading, and President of RASHID International (Research, Assessment, Safeguarding the Heritage of Iraq in Danger). He was previously Director and Chairman of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, and Director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. With Dr Wendy Matthews, he is Co-Director of the Central Zagros Archaeological Project, investigating the origins of settled farming life in the Zagros mountains of western Iran and eastern Iraq, 10,000–7000 BC.
Colin Renfrew holds a Ph.D from the University of Cambridge. After lecturing in Archaeology at Sheffield and then Southampton he was Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge from 1981 to 2004. He continues to excavate in the Cycladic Islands of Greece, and sits in the House of Lords as Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn.
Eleanor Robson is Professor of Ancient Middle Eastern History, UCL, with a particular focus on Iraq, and Head of the UCL History Department. She directs the AHRC-GCRF-funded Nahrein Network, which supports locally-led research on the role of heritage, history and the humanities in fostering sustainable social and economic growth in post-conflict Iraq and its neighbours.
Heather Viles is Professor of Biogeomorphology and Heritage Conservation in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford and Co-Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Science and Engineering in Art, Heritage and Archaeology (SEAHA). Her main research interests are in the interactions between ecological and geomorphological processes, rock weathering and the application of geomorphological techniques to heritage conservation. She is currently carrying out research with the Getty Conservation Institute on evaluating sandstone conservation treatments, and on the conservation of earthen heritage on the Silk Road.
Dr Susan Walker FSA is an Emerita Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. She was Keeper of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum from 2004–2014 and President of the Society for Libyan Studies from 2012–2016. She is Co-PI of Libyan Antiquities at Risk.

Zaki Aslan is a regional representative of ICCROM for the Arab States and founding director of the Sharjah-based ICCROM-ATHAR Regional Conservation Centre, UAE. A conservation architect, since 2003 he has been Manager of ICCROM’s ATHAR Programme (Conservation of Cultural Heritage in the Arab Region). He provides  technical advice to ICCROM’s Member States on issues related to: heritage conservation, management and national planning/ policies; World Heritage procedures; implementation of field projects; and, education, public outreach, capacity building, and curricula development.