David Roxburgh

David J. Roxburgh is Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Islamic Art History at Harvard University where he has taught since he received the Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania in 1996. In his publications, Roxburgh has pursued several interests—including aesthetics and the history of reception—and approaches to the study of art history. He has focused on primary written sources, manuscript painting, art of the book, calligraphy, Timurid art and architecture, exchanges between China and the Islamic lands, travel narratives, and the pre-modern through contemporary histories of collecting, exhibitions, and museums. He has published two books, Prefacing the Image: The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-Century Iran (Leiden, 2001), and The Persian Album 1400-1600: From Dispersal to Collection (New Haven, 2005). Roxburgh has also co-curated exhibitions and written for their catalogues (Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years [London, 2005], and Traces of the Calligrapher: Islamic Calligraphy in Practice, c. 1600-1900 [Houston, 2007]). Roxburgh is currently working on two books about illustrated Arabic manuscripts of the late 1100s through early 1200s and the study of Medieval architecture in Iran.

Full c.v. and list of publications available on personal website.

History of Islamic Art and Architecture with focus on Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia in post-Mongol through early modern periods.

History of Art and Architecture

Professor, Harvard University