Michael Shenkar#
| Membership Number: | 7052 |
| Membership type: | ORDINARY |
| Section: | HISTORY & ARCHAEOLOGY |
| Elected: | 2025 |
| Main Country of Residence: | ISRAEL |
| Homepage(s): | https://scholars.huji.ac.il/michaelshenkar |
| ORCID: | 0000-0002-3604-4481 |
Present and Previous Positions
- 2020 - present Associate Professor of Pre-Islamic Iranian Studies, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- 2024 - present Honorary Affiliate, the Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre, University of Oxford.
- 2024 - present Visiting Professor at the Department of History of Samarkand Civilization, Samarkand State University, Uzbekistan
- 2023 - 2024 Visiting Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Oxford
- 2023 - 2024 Visiting Scholar, the Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre, University of Oxford
- 2024 - present Academic Director of the Kafyrkala Excavations, Tajikistan
- 2014 - present Director (together with Sharof Kurbanov) of the Sanjar-Shah Excavations, Tajikistan
- 2015 - 2020 Senior Lecturer in Pre-Islamic Iranian Studies, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- 2014 - 2015 Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow, German Archaeological Institute, Berlin
- 2013 - 2014 Research and Teaching Associate, Chair: History and Cultures of Pre-Islamic Central Asia, Collège de France, Paris
Fields of Scholarship
- Zoroastrianism
- Archaeology
- Art
- “Silk Roads”
- Sogdian civilization
- Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia
- Eurasian nomads
Honours and Awards
- 2016 Alon Fellowship for Outstanding Young Faculty by the Israeli Council for Higher Education.
- 2015 Prix Ghirshman of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Institut de France.
- 2013 Max Schlomiuk award for PhD dissertation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem




