Project Team

David Harvey is an Associate Professor in Critical Heritage Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. His work has focussed on the geographies of heritage and he has contributed to debates over processual understandings of heritage, heritage-landscape and heritage-climate change relations, as well as work on remembrance, on oral history and farming practice. With colleagues, he is presently developing work on ‘heritage-border complexes’, ‘peaceful/pacific heritage’ and ‘island living’. Recent work includes Creating Heritage: Unrecognised Pasts and Rejected Futures (edited with Tom Carter, Roy Jones and Iain Robertson, 2020) and The Real Agricultural Revolution: the Transformation of English Farming, 1939-1985 (with Paul Brassley, Matt Lobley and Mike Winter), which won the Thirsk Memorial Prize (2022) for Agricultural History Book of the Year. 

Website
Publications
Blog
Email: david.harvey@cas.au.dk 

Ali Mozaffari, PhD, is a Senior Fellow with the Alfred Deakin Institute and a former Australian Research Council (DECRA) Fellow at, Deakin University, Australia. His current research interests include geopolitics of the past as well as culture and the built environment with a specific focus on West Asia. His publications include Heritage Movements in Asia: Cultural Heritage Activism, Politics, and Identity (edited volume with Tod Jones, Berghahn 2020), Development, architecture and the formation of heritage in late-twentieth century Iran: A vital past (Manchester University Press 2020), World Heritage in Iran; Perspectives on Pasargadae (Routledge 2016), and Forming National Identity in Iran: The Idea of Homeland Derived from Ancient Persian and Islamic Imaginations of Place (IB Tauris 2014). Mozaffari is the founding co-editor of Berghahn’s series Explorations in Heritage Studies and co-founder of the Heritage and Transnationalism Network (HTN) with the Association of Critical Heritage Studies. 

Website

Publications

Email: heritageinwestasia@gmail.com 

Dr Rishika Mukhopadhyay is a lecturer in Development Geographies at the School of Geography and Environmental Sciences at the University of Southampton, UK. Her work spans across two broad research strands; a. meaning, production and politics of living heritage including craft based livelihoods, sensory aspects, sacred sites intersecting with the urban development of southern cities b. community-based economies in postindustrial and postcolonial contexts. She has co-curated two arts-based public engagement exhibitions as part of her research practice. Previously she held positions at University of Exeter and University of Durham. She is currently working on two projects on transnational diasporic heritage in sacred spaces funded by British Academy and Korean National Commission UNESCO and Cultural Heritage Administration. She is a member of the Association for Critical Heritage Studies and Royal Geographical Society with IBG. 

She can be reached by email at r.mukhopadhyay@soton.ac.uk. 

Ali Javid, PhD is an architect, educator, and scholar specializing in the history and theory of architecture based in Sydney, Australia. He earned his PhD in this field from the University of Western Australia in 2023. His primary research focus lies in architectural pedagogy and the history and theory of architecture.

His latest publication, The Politics of Architectural Pedagogy in Iran: From Pedagogical Revolution to Revolutionary Pedagogy (1960-1990), was released by Routledge on August 31, 2024. This book, adapted from his doctoral dissertation, explores the evolution of architectural education during two pivotal socio-political upheavals in Iran: the White Revolution (1963) and the Islamic Revolution (1979). It delves into how these transformative periods shaped the field of architecture, offering valuable insights into the interplay between architectural education and broader socio-political changes in Iran.

Madiha studies Sociology and Anthropology at Ashoka University, India, with research interests in cultural studies, spatiality, critical theory, and questions of identity. She has held research roles at the University of Southampton and the University of Pennsylvania, and was more recently an Ashoka Media Studies Departmental Fellow (2025). Here she worked on ethnographies of transnational Kashmiri diaspora digital networks as modes of world-making in- and against a borderland. She is eager to continue in the space of critical epistemologies, pedagogies, and contested subjectivities in varied social and political contexts.  

Miriam got her BA in Archaeology from Aarhus University, where she is now getting an MA in Sustainable Heritage Management. Her interests lie in cultural entanglement, postcolonial heritage-making and contested heritage. She is also very interested in the origins and parallels in musical folklore worldwide. For her internship with the HBC project, she is working on the website and on WP2 with the Moravian Settlements transnational WHS as well as WP3 on Indian diaspora. 

Siqing Yang is a second-year MA student in Sustainable Heritage Management and a current intern at the HBC Project. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Tourism Studies and previously worked at the First Emperor Mausoleum Museum. His current research focuses on civilizational rhetoric and practices in Central Asian geopolitics. During his internship, he is responsible for data analysis and updating the HBC website.

Aadchaya Apputhurai is a second-year Undergraduate Environmental Science student at the University of Southampton. She contributed to secondary data research and mapping the diaspora part of the project. She is interested in GIS, cartography and environmental issues. As a South Asian child born to immigrant parents in the UK, she is immensely interested in the diaspora's transnational heritage.

Annie Gibson recieved her BA in history at Walla Walla University and is currently an MA student in Aarhus University's Sustainable Heritage Management program. Her contributions to the Futures of Eurasia project include analysis of key player organizations and their influence on heritage border complexes, and designing the project website. With varied interests in religious history,  geopolitics, and music heritage, she is open to exploring various opportunities that align with her passions for heritage preservation and understanding cultural landscapes. Annie looks forward to connecting with fellow professionals and organizations that share her commitment to heritage and its vital role in our understanding of diverse communities and histories.

Dekav is a student researcher focusing on the overlap of critical heritage studies, material culture, and Eastern-Western dynamics. She is taking a Master's degree in Sustainable Heritage Management, Aarhus University. She completed her undergraduate in architecture, with some field study on architectural heritage in Dutch-Indies colonization towards Indonesia. In this Eurasia Heritage-Border Complex project, she is focusing on the nomination of Roman Wall as World Heritage Site using institutional archive. Later on, she is keen to explore other types of archives and aiming to bring novelty in decolonizing material culture.

Jay Mateo is a master's student in Sustainable Heritage Management at Aarhus University and contributed the cartographic research for this project. They studied communications and geography for their undergraduate career, with focuses in Asian languages (Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi) and environmental chemistry. Their research interests include cultural landscapes in relation to both identity and geopolitics and their career interests extend to conservancy and ecotourism. They currently serve as an interpretive park ranger in the US National Park Service.

Julia’s interest in heritage and its potential to address today’s pressing global issues grew from her interdisciplinary background in the humanities, developed through a BA in liberal arts. MA in Sustainable Heritage Management further deepened her focus on critical heritage studies, particularly around ecological issues. In September 2024, Julia began her PhD at Aarhus University, studying the intersections of heritage and borders within the Bialowieza Forest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Her work examines the impacts of recent disruptions in the Forest—from logging and exploitation to a humanitarian crisis—within a world increasingly affected by climate collapse, migration, and shifting environmental policies.