Former Team Members

Dr Paul Collins, The British Museum

Former Co-Investigator

Paul Collins is Keeper of the Middle East Department at the British Museum. He was previously Professor of Ancient Middle East and Jaleh Hearn Curator in the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. His research interests include the role of visual representation in the origins of the state and kingship in Mesopotamia, the meaning of Assyrian imagery, the history of collecting, and the role of museum displays in shaping disciplinary knowledge.

• Podcast interview with Paul

Dr Rozhen Kamal Mohammed-Amin, Kurdistan Institution for Strategic Studies & Scientific Research (KISSR)

Former Co-Investigator

Dr Rozhen Kamal Mohammed-Amin is an architect and academic with an interdisciplinary background and research interest in the confluence of digital technology, architecture, and cultural heritage. She is a lecturer and researcher at the Kurdistan Institution for Strategic Studies & Scientific Research (KISSR) and co-founder and president of the Cultural Heritage Organization (CHO). Rozhen also serves as vice president of RASHID, an international network dedicated to safeguarding the cultural heritage of Iraq with ECOSOC/UN special consultative status, and is a member of UKRI’s International Development Peer Review College.

In her capacity as co-investigator on the Nahrein Network project, Rozhen supported some of the ongoing projects, conducts research in digital heritage in Iraq and its Kurdistan Region along with her team at CHO. She supervised various training and community outreach activities at the CHO-KISSR office of the Nahrein Network.

• Podcast interview with Rozhen

Oana Borlea-Stancioi

Former Project Administrator

Oana was the former Nahrein Network Administrator. She was the single point of contact for all project inquiries including applications to the Network's Grants, Visiting Scholarship Scheme and Graduate Studentship and any resulting reports.

Oana supported the core team in putting in place any needed contracts, making payments and general day-to-day administrative assistance. She is now pursueing her PhD research.

Dr. Parsa Daneshmand

Former Research Fellow

Parsa holds a PhD in Cuneiform Studies from the University of Oxford. In 2019, he was appointed to a two-year visiting professorship at the Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations (IHAC) at Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China. Parsa’s research interests focus on divination as a method of decision-making in the ancient Near East, councils and assemblies of Mesopotamian cities, and the role of consensus decision-making in ancient societies.

As a former Research Fellow on the Nahrein Network project, Parsa created an Arabic-English text edition on Oracc of cuneiform tablets from Kish, based on the CDLI catalogue of c. 2100 documented inscribed artefacts, focusing on tablets now housed in the Ashmolean Museum. He also contributed to the Network team’s collaborative project on the history, heritage and legacy of Kish, with a focus on the cuneiform evidence, including (co-) authoring and publishing of original research in English and Arabic. Parsa also designed online/in-person workshops for Oracc’s end users and content creators in English and Arabic.