Team at SOAS

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• Almut Hintze (PI) leads the MUYA project and co-ordinates and directs the work of its four work packages. She directs and mentors the research carried out by the three postdoctoral researchers and supervises the project’s three PhD students. In all of these tasks she is supported by both funded and unfunded project collaborators. Almut Hintze studied Classics and Indo-European philology in Heidelberg, Oxford and Erlangen. From 1990 to 1996 she taught Indo-Iranian Studies in Berlin. Since 1998 she has been at SOAS, University of London, where she is now Zartoshty Brothers Professor in Zoroastrianism. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2015. She has published on Indo-Iranian and, especially, Avestan philology and on Zoroastrianism. Her major works include an edition of the Avestan Zamyād Yašt and a study of the meanings of different words meaning ‘reward’ or ‘retribution’ in Vedic and Avestan, and an edition with translation, commentary and dictionary of an Old Avestan ritual, the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti.

• Nicholas Sims-Williams co-supervises PhD 1, 2 and 3 during project years 1–5. After studying at Cambridge University (Old and Middle Iranian languages, Sanskrit, Syriac and linguistics) he taught at SOAS, University of London, from 1976, retiring in 2015 as Emeritus Professor of Iranian and Central Asian Studies. He has published many books and articles, chiefly on the Eastern Iranian languages Sogdian and Bactrian.

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• Sarah Stewart co-supervises PhD 1 during project years 1–3 and acts as consultant on WP1. She is a lecturer in Zoroastrianism in the Dept. of Religions and Philosophies at SOAS and former Deputy Director of the LMEI (also at SOAS). Her research is on the oral traditions of Zoroastrianism with particular emphasis on the living faith. She is the PI of a British Academy funded project on contemporary Zoroastrianism in Iran for which she has recorded over 300 interviews, mainly in the Dari language. Her work includes collaboration with Philip Kreyenbroak on a similar project on Parsis in India. She has recently been the lead curator of the exhibition Everlasting Flame: Zoroastrianism in history and imagination, that presented a visual narrative of Zoroastrianism through the ages and was shown at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS and the National Museum, Delhi.

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• Mandana Seyfeddinipur provides training in documentary methods of filming techniques, annotation tools, data management and archiving. She guides the team in the documentary and technological methods of language documentation and archiving.

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• Leon Goldman (2016-2019) collaborates with the PI on the online publication of the sub-titled film of the Yasna ritual. He also monitors and coordinates manuscript transcriptions via the project’s Online Transcription Editor (OTE), collates manuscripts,  creates a text-critical apparatus and constitutes the text. His output will be a text-critical print-edition of the Yasna chapters 58-61. Holding a B.A. (Hons.) in Religions and Sanskrit from the University of Queensland (Australia) (2004) and an MA specializing in Iranian and Zoroastrian Studies from SOAS (2007), Leon Goldman was awarded a PhD at SOAS in 2012 for his doctoral thesis on an edition with translation and commentary of the Avestan Rašn Yašt. He was a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at SOAS in 2012–2015. His publications include a text-critical edition of the Rašn Yašt (2015) and a facsimile edition of the Sanskrit Yasna manuscript S1 (2017).

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• Céline Redard collaborates on the transcriptions of the manuscripts using the OTE and manuscript collation. She is working towards a text-critical print-edition of Yasna chapters 3-8 and will assist in the sub-titling of the film of the Yasna. Before specialising in Iranian Studies, she studied Indo-European Linguistics, Sanskrit and Latin in Switzerland (Licence ès Lettres et Sciences Humaines, University of Neuchâtel, 2005). In 2010, she obtained her PhD at EPHE (Paris, France) for her doctoral thesis with an edition, translation and commentary on Vidēvdād 19. After working as a research assistant at the Collège de France (Paris) from 2008 to 2014, she was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship (BeIPD-COFUND) at the University of Liège in Belgium (2014-2016). During that time, she concentrated her research on the link between the so-called Long Liturgy and the short liturgies. In 2013, she published a book with Jean Kellens entitled 'La liquidation du sacrifice (Y62 à 72)'. She has also edited several books, including 'Persian Religion in the Achaemenid Period' with Wouter Henkelman' (2017).​

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• Mehrbod Khanizadeh will prepare a text-critical edition of the Avestan text of chapters 9-11 of the Yasna. This text is also known as the Hōm Yašt, or Hōm Stōm. Mehrbod had studied Veterinary Medicine and Animal Pathology (MSc) first. However, since he was also interested in the history and languages of ancient Iran, he changed his field of study and obtained an MA in Ancient Languages and Culture of Iran (2010) from the University of Shahid Beheshti in Iran. To pursue his studies, he applied to SOAS and was awarded an MA (Distinction) in Zoroastrianism and a PhD degree in 2013 and 2018, respectively. For his PhD, Mehrbod provided a text-critical edition with translation and commentary of the Pahlavi version of Yasna 9 stanzas 1-15.​

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• Kerman Daruwalla (PhD candidate) will prepare a study of priestly training of ritual performance. He investigates the teaching and learning of rituals, in particular those of the Yasna, in India and Iran. The chief priestly school, and the only functional one in India, is Mumbai’s Dadar Athornan Institute, whose principal, Ervad Ramiyar Karanjia, is a collaborator of MUYA. Making use of the equipment employed for filming the Yasna ritual and collecting a substantial amount of empirical data, the analysis of Kerman’s project will throw light on the teaching and mnemonic techniques used in Zoroastrian priestly training. He will also collect data of what is left of the higher ritual performance in Iran. Kerman holds an MA degree in Avesta-Pahlavi from the University of Mumbai and an MA in Iranian Studies from SOAS.

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• Benedikt Peschl (PhD candidate) works on a text-critical edition of the Ahunavaitī Gāthā (Yasna 28-34). In connection to MUYA’s filming of a Yasna ceremony in Mumbai, Benedikt will also contribute to the analysis of the text of the liturgy in contemporary practice and exegesis. His further interests include Middle Iranian languages, Vedic Sanskrit and Comparative Indo-European linguistics. He holds a BA in General and Indo-European Linguistics from the University of Munich and an MA in Religions (specialising on Zoroastrianism) from SOAS. He has previously been employed as a Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the Indo-European linguistics department of the University of Munich.

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• Martina Palladino (PhD candidate) works on a text-critical edition of the Sanskrit version of Yasna 0/1-8. She will complete the edition and translation of the Sanskrit text with the Old Gujarātī version of the same passage. Holding a BA in Sanskrit Language and Literature (Bologna, Italy) and a MA in Religious History of the Iranian World (idem), in 2017 Martina received her first PhD in History and Cultures from the University of Bologna, defending her dissertation on the Śākadvīpīya (or Maga) Brāhmaṇas.

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• Stefano Damanins (PhD candidate) works on a text-critical edition of the conclusion of the Yasna ritual (Y. 62-72), which will include a commentary discussing not only linguistic-philological problems, but also liturgical matters and the overall interpretation of the ceremony. His background is in Classics and the Humanities, since he holds both a BA (University of Trieste) and an MA (University of Bologna) in these subjects; nonetheless, after he had passed several exams in Oriental Languages and Literatures (Sanskrit, Armenian, Iranistics) during his MA, he graduated with a dissertation concerning a critical edition of the 18th Yašt of the Avesta. His further interests are Classical Literature(s), Ancient and Medieval History of Europe and Asia, General and Indo-European Linguistics.