FOUNDING MEMBERS
Sargon Donabed
Sargon Donabed is an associate professor of history at Roger Williams University. He holds a PhD in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations from the University of Toronto and a MSci from Canisius College in Anthrozoology/Animal Studies.
Donabed is one of the foremost experts on the perennial history of Assyria-Mesopotamia and its heritage. His recent focus consists of indigenous and marginalized methodologies concerning the development of Assyrian Studies as an anti-orientalist and anti-colonialist field, as well as issues of cultural continuity. Currently, his studies in animal studies touch upon storytelling and folklore and issues of re-enchantment of reality through myth and panentheism. Sargon is also at present working on two major fantasy epics.
In addition, he is a TAARII (the American Academic Research Institute in Iraq) recipient, serves on the advisory board of the journal Chronos, published by the University of Balamand and is also the editor for the book series Alternative Histories: Narratives from the Middle East and Mediterranean with Edinburgh University Press. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-alternative-histories.html
Donabed is also published in a variety of journals from Folklore to National Identities and Perspectives on History and is the author of Reforging a Forgotten History: Iraq and the Assyrians in the 20th Century (Edinburgh University Press, 2015) and co-editor and contributor to numerous works including The Assyrian Heritage: Threads of Continuity and Influence (Uppsala University, 2012) among others. Currently, he is under contract to write a comprehensive history entitled The Assyrians: A Cultural History from Empire to Endangered Existence (Cambridge University Press). He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School and Brown University and lectures in various universities around the world.
Helen Malko
Dr. Helen Malko is an anthropological archaeologist with training in cultural heritage studies. She is the Associate Director of the Stanford Humanities Center at Stanford University. Her research focuses on the Near East's archaeology, the destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq and its impact on local communities, including the Assyrians. Other areas of her scholarly interest include cultural representation in museums and cultural and collective memory.
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Dr. Malko received a PhD from Stony Brook University and a master’s degree from Baghdad University. She was awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship to conduct research in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art, Metropolitan Museum (2012- 2014). From 2014 to 2017, Dr. Malko was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Art History and Archaeology and the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University.
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Her publications include “Heritage Wars: A Cultural Genocide in Iraq” in Cultural Genocide:
Law, Politics, and Global Manifestations, ed. Jeffrey Bachman (Routledge, 2019), a co-authored article “Parthian Rock Reliefs in Iraqi Kurdistan” in Iraq 2019, the BISI Journal, "The Kassites of Babylonia: A Re-examination of an Ethnic Identity," in Studies on the Sealand and Babylonia under the Kassites, eds. Susanne Paulus and Tim Clayden (Berlin: De Gruyter 2020), “The Assyrians of South West Asia: Modern People, Ancient Past,” in Ancient Near Eastern Empires, 2023.