Unbound

Dr Christine van Ruymbeke did her undergradate studies at the Secretariat at Brussels’ Université Libre, she then went on to do a PhD. Her PhD was on the botanical references within the giant work of the twelfth-century Persian poet, Nizami of Ganja.

At the end of this research, she was granted a Wiener Anspach postdoctoral Fellowship to spend a year at Oxford.  She was then offered a part-time position as assistant researcher to the Cambridge Shahnama project (www.ames.cam.ac.uk/shah) and was, at the same time, appointed lecturer in Persian language, literature and art history at her home university in Brussels. In 2002 she moved to Cambridge as full-time Lecturer in Persian.

She is a Trustee and Honorary Secretary of the Ancient India and Iran Trust [AITT], which is based in the once home to Professor Harold Bailey, and has become a centre for scholarly research and for the promotion of popular interest in the Indian Subcontinent, Iran and Central Asia. The AIIT houses a unique collection of books mainly centred on these domains, but spilling over into many neighbouring cultures.

Dr van Ruymbeke is also a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, a member of the Academic Committee of Iran Heritage Foundation and a member of the Management Committee of the Centre for Islamic Studies at Cambridge.