Series RASM/7 - Carole and Robert Hillenbrand

Carole Hillenbrand CBE FBA is a British Islamic scholar who is Emerita Professor in Islamic History at the University of Edinburgh and Professor of Islamic History at the University of St Andrews. She studied modern languages at Girton College, Cambridge (starting 1962), and Arabic and Turkish at Somerville College, Oxford, She earned her PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 1979.

Hillenbrand specialises in classical Islamic history, especially the period of the Seljuqs and the Crusades and has produced major publications and articles within this field.

Robert Hillenbrand FBA is a British art historian who specialises in Persian and Islamic art. He is an Honorary Professorial Fellow of the universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge for 2008–09 and has held various visiting fellowships. He has also served on the Councils of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem , British Research in the Levant , and the British Institute of Persian Studies (Vice-President).

In 2018 during the conference of the Association of Iranian Studies at the University of California, Irvine, the Lifetime Achievement Award was awarded to Hillenbrand. In the same year he appeared in the documentary film Taq Kasra: Wonder of Architecture as a scholar of Sassanid Persia.