CONTRIBUTORS
Dr. Venetia Porter
Vanetia is a senior Curator of Islamic and Contemporary Middle East Art at the British Museum( 1989 – 2022), is now Honorary Research Fellow there and at the Courtauld, and a trustee of the Arab British Centre. She studied Arabic, Persian, and Islamic art at Oxford; her Durham PhD examines medieval Yemen’ s history and architecture. She led curation of the Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World( 2018). Her research spans Islamic tiles, Yemeni history, Arabic inscriptions, amulets, and contemporary art. Books include Thea Porter’ s Scrapbook, her mother’ s autobiography( editor; Unicorn Press, 2019); Artists Making Books: Poetry to Politics( British Museum Press, 2023); and Archiving Gaza in the Present( co-editor with Dina Matar; Saqi Books, 2025).
Dr. Khawla Almarri
Khawla is an Emirati cultural researcher and museologist based between Dubai and Doha. Her academic interests include the history of the Arabian Gulf and its cultural heritage and identity. Dr. Khawla Almarri is the author of Heroes and Villains: A Conversation Between Evil and Good in the Middle East( 2019) and Interview with a Collector: A Closer Look at Qatari Collectors and Their Stories( 2021), which was sponsored by the National Museum of Qatar. She is currently the Section Head of Education and Community Engagement at Al Ain Museum.
Issa Makhlouf
Issa is a Lebanese writer and poet based in Paris. He is the author of numerous books, including Mirages( 2004), Lettre aux deux sœurs( 2008; Max Jacob Prize) and Une ville dans le ciel( 2015), all published by Éditions José Corti. He has also translated French and Latin American authors into Arabic, among them Georges Schehadé( L’ Émigré de Brisbane) and Antonin Artaud( Van Gogh, le suicidé de la société). He holds a doctorate in social and cultural anthropology from the Sorbonne, has held several senior positions in the press, and served as Special Advisor on Cultural Affairs at the United Nations in New York.
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