Univ.-Prof. Dr. Deborah Klimburg-Salter

Project Director
University of Vienna / Harvard University
Universität Wien
Institut für Kunstgeschichte
Spitalgasse 2, Hof 9 (Campus), 1090 Wien

Klimburg-Salter received a PhD at Harvard University and Habilitation from the University of Vienna. She has taught the art history of South, Central, and Southeast Asia as well as Tibet and the Himalayan regions as Univ. Prof. at the University of Vienna’s Department of Art History and as Guest Professor at distinguished universities in Europe, North America, and Asia. She was founding Director of CIRDIS (Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Documentation of Inner and South Asia) at the University of Vienna until 2015, and since 2014, she has been an Associate of the Department of South Asian Studies, Harvard University. She is a Member of the Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton; Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin; Fellow, Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Studies (JNIAS), Delhi; and previously Visiting Fellow, Magdalen College, Oxford University. In 2020, she received the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Wilhelm Härtel Prize for her scholarly achievements in the field of Asian Art History.

HR Doz. Dr. Michael Alram

National Research Partner
Art History Museum Vienna / Austrian Academy of Sciences
Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften
Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut, Abteilung Altertumswissenschaften
Hollandstraße 11-13, 1020 Wien

Alram is a numismatist specializing in coinage of the Iranian world and Central Asia. He received his PhD from the University of Vienna’s Departments of Ancient Numismatics and Classical Archaeology. Since 2013, Alram has been Vice-president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Head of the Academy’s Division Documenta Antiqua, Institute for the Study of Ancient Culture. He was Director of the Coin Cabinet at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien from 2008 to 2020 and previously Curator for Byzantine, Medieval and Oriental Numismatics (1986-2008). He has served as President of the International Numismatic Council since 2015. He was recently named correspondant étranger of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (2019) and recipient of the Archer M. Huntington Award of the American Numismatic Society (2016).

Doz. Mag. Dr. Klaus Vondrovec

Art History Museum Vienna / University of Vienna
Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien
Münzkabinett
Burgring 5, 1010 Wien 

Vondrovec is a numismatist of ancient coinage spanning Europe to Central and South Asia. He is Deputy Director and Curator at the Coin Cabinet of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. Since 2004, Vondrovec has also been a lecturer at the University of Vienna’s Department of Numismatics and Monetary History, where he previously received his PhD and Habilitation. He has curated several exhibitions at the KHM, most recently ‘Böse Kaiser’ (2019). In addition to numerous articles, Vondrovec published two important monographs: Coinage of the Iranian Huns and their Successors from Bactria to Gandhara (4th to 8th century CE) (Vienna, 2014) and Die antiken Fundmünzen von Ovilavis/Wels (Vienna, 2003).

Dr. Natasha Kimmet

University of Vienna / Austrian Academy of Sciences

Kimmet is an art historian of South Asia, Tibet, and the Himalayas. Her research interests include Buddhist art and architecture, the arts of Afghanistan and Historical Northwest India, vernacular architecture of Tibet and the Himalayas, and methodologies in borderland and cultural transfer studies. She completed her PhD at the University of Vienna with a dissertation offering the first documentation and historical examination of residential architecture on the high-altitude frontier of historical West Tibet (upper Kinnaur, India). Kimmet has presented the art of South Asia and the Himalayas to specialist and broad audiences. As 2015-2017 Curatorial Fellow at the Rubin Museum of Art, she curated ‘Monumental Lhasa: Fortress, Palace, Temple.’ Since 2011, she has taught Afghan art history and curatorial practice in the University of Vienna / National Museum of Afghanistan Kabul Museum Project. As Postdoctoral Researcher in the Shahi project, Kimmet’s research concentrates on Buddhist clay-based sculpture.