Robert is the Director-Chair and until 2025 professor of heritage and museum studies at New York University Abu Dhabi.  He holds a doctorate in the Historical-Archaeology of European Expansion from the University of Amsterdam. Between 1998-2005 he was curator of the Amsterdam Historical Museum.

He managed the culture and development programme in the Bay of Galle, with the Avondster Project, through which he trained and helped to established a Maritime Archaeological Unit in Sri Lanka. Building in these prograns Robert established CIE in 2006. Other signature programs were the Maritime and Underwater Cultural Heritage Programs in the Indian Ocean, Mutual Cultural Heritage network and the Culture and Development Program in Afghanistan. He currently works on various research and collaboration projects working towards more inclusive and sustainable heritage collaboration. 

Alia Yunis has worked on projects on five continents, focusing her writing and filmmaking on memory and heritage. Her feature documentary, The Golden Harvest (2019), made its debut at Thessaloniki International Film Festival, won Best of the Fest at its US debut at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival and has gone on to play in several other festivals. Alia spent many years in Los Angeles as a screenwriter and script analyst for companies such as Village Roadshow Pictures and Miramax. Alia is a PEN Emerging Voices Fellow and the recipient of a comedy-writing award from Warner Bros.  Her novel, The Night Counter (Random House 2010), was critically-acclaimed by the Washington Post, the Boston Entertainment Weekly, and several other publications, and it is read in classes in several schools and universities.  Her fiction and non-fiction writings have appeared in numerous books, magazines and anthologies and been translated into six languages.

She is currently co-editing two anthologies looking at the connections between the Gulf and the rest of the Arab world, Africa and the Indian subcontinent through film and visual media. She is is one of the contributing writers on the Historical Dictionary of Middle Eastern Cinema (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) and Oxford Bibliographies (2021). In 2010, she co-founded the Zayed University Middle East Film Festival (ZUMEFF), now the longest running film festival in the Gulf. She is also one of the two co-founders at UAE National Film Library housed at Zayed University

Biljana Volchevska is the Deputy Director of the CIE and also leads the Institute for Heritage Justice which stimulates academic study concerning heritage questions surrounding National Museums, World Heritage Sites and development through culture. As part of her work, she facilitates partnerships between scholars, activists, and cultural practitioners, and promotes heritage approaches that acknowledge and address historical inequalities.

Biljana holds a PhD in Memory and Heritage Studies from Utrecht University (2024), where she researched how cultural practices can drive social change in politically repressive contexts. Focusing on South Eastern Europe, particularly the Balkans, her work explores the dual role of culture as both a tool of state control and a site of resistance. She examines how memory narratives and heritage intersect with civil movements, and how political forces such as populism, authoritarianism, and EU integration shape cultural policies, national identities, and historical representation.

Alongside her work at CIE, Biljana is a lecturer in Cultural Studies at Tilburg University, where she teaches and supervises students in topics related to memory, heritage, and cultural politics. 

Earlier in her career, she coordinated CIE’s programme on Culture and Development in Afghanistan, supporting heritage-based initiatives in conflict-affected areas.

Dr. Alia Soliman is a researcher, academic, and writer in the field of art, heritage, and cultural studies. She holds an MA in Comparative Literature from the American University in Cairo and a PhD in Cultural Studies from the Centre of Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry at University College London, UK. Her research interests and teaching methods are interdisciplinary. She is a creative-critical writer who was nominated for the Pushcart award. She has published a number of peer-reviewed articles on contemporary Arab visual art, digital humanities, ekphrastic writing, reading and alterity, digitization and cultural heritage, the legacy of colonialism in museum practices, and the intersection of memory and image. 

She is a  member of the UK Art History Association’s Doctoral and Early Career Research Committee. She’s an academic trainer; in addition to her teaching practice, she runs workshops for undergraduate and graduate students which include: Introduction to Visual Literacy, The Craft of Creative Visual Writing, and Narrative Writing: How to Craft a Story. She is a Lecturer of Cultural and Visual Studies.

Her monograph The Doppelgänger in Our Time: Visions of Alterity in Literature, Visual Culture, and New Media is forthcoming in 2023 from Peter Lang Publishers UK.

More info: aliasoliman.com

Felix Hardmood Beck is a visual communication expert and designer. He studied visual communication with a focus on media and exhibition design at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he graduated in 2007. He has gained extensive practical experience in media design and user experience, working with renowned German design agencies and architectural studios on various projects featured in art and design publications, festivals, and exhibitions worldwide. As an independent design director, he works with clients from the business and cultural sectors, creating designs for products and services, as well as interactive installations for showrooms, exhibitions, and museums.

Felix has a passion for sharing his knowledge and experiences, traveling to lecture at institutions globally and collaborating with international research groups. From 2015 to 2020, he served as an Assistant Professor of Practice of Design at NYU Abu Dhabi, where he initiated and led research labs, published research findings, and provided consultancy services to government entities in the UAE. In 2020, he became a Full Professor at the University of Applied Sciences, Münster School of Design, focusing on investigating systems, spaces, and physical properties of artifacts and materials. Felix has received substantial research grants and has affiliations with research centers in Germany and the UAE. He also collaborates with Dharma Life Labs to enhance rural life in India.

Sibongile works with CIE since 2009. She is coordinating the “Our World Heritage”; a global initiative promoted by a group of individuals involved over the years in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention with an aim of transforming the manner in which the Convention is implemented. Sibo is a lecturer in Museum and Heritage Studies at Sol Plaatje University in the Northern Cape of South Africa. She holds a PhD in environmental Education from Rhodes University. She is currently a Deputy Editor for the Southern African Journal of Environmental Education. Sibongile is also involved in two African Union projects which are; the development of a framework for the cultural and creative industries for Africa as well as a member of an Africa team conceptualising the Museum of Africa project which will be based in Algeria.

Nurcan is an experienced archaeologist based in Istanbul. She completed her PhD at the University of Istanbul in 2005 and is an Executive Board Member for the European Association of Archaeologists (2013-2016) as well as on the Board of Trustees for the Cultural Awareness Foundation in Istanbul. Nurcan has worked with CIE as an Advisor for a number of years, and has taken a leading role in many of our fieldschools and identification missions such as those in Sri Lanka and Tanzania. Nurcan has also been involved in developing sustainable heritage education programmes in Turkey and Tanzania. 

NiccolòAcram Cappelletto is an MA student in Arts, Museology and Curatorship at University of Bologna. After his BA in Art and Art History at New York University Abu Dhabi, he worked as a Post-Graduate Research Fellow with Dhakira Center for Heritage Studies on the relationship between heritage and contemporary art concerning postcolonial Italy and other projects in the UAE. NiccolòAcram has previously been a research assistant in digital humanities with the Paris Bible Project. In 2021, he joined Global Art Daily, an independent publication on contemporary art in the UAE after being a gallery assistant in Venice, Paris, and Abu Dhabi. These experiences raised his interests for a decolonial thinking of today’s theoretical frameworks in the heritage field

Umayya is a writer and researcher specializing in cultural policy, identity and future planning. With a BA in Asian and African studies and MA in Media Studies, she has worked as a tv-journalist, lecturer, and as a researcher at the Finnish National Gallery. She was a member of the Arts council of Finland and chaired its first Multicultural Board. As an advisor and expert she worked for the Finnish Ministries of Education, Culture, and Finance. She actively works with the CIE with our events and heritage activities, as well as working on CIE publications.

Claire is a 2018 NYU Abu Dhabi graduate who advocates for inclusive policy making that creates space for the female, youth and black voice. She has worked with youth networks and community groups in South Africa, Mozambique, the UAE, East Africa and South East Asia to this end. She is currently pursuing a Masters in Public Policy and Global Affairs from the University of British Columbia.