Farnaz Arefian has a multidisciplinary background in development planning, urban design and architecture, and strategic management. She enjoys a combined 25 years of experience in academia and consultancy practice in the Middle East, UK and South East Asia, delivering various international researches and professional urban design and development projects and reconstruction. She is the founder of ‘Silk Cities’, an independent, bottom-up initiative that draws interest from a wide range of built environment professionals, academics and students from around the globe. The ‘Silk Cities’ initiative is concerned with contextual urban challenges that historical cities in countries along the historic Silk Roads face within the process of urban transformation, as a result of their historic past. Its initial focus area is the Middle East and Central Asia. Academically, Farnaz is affiliated with the University Of Newcastle, Australia, and an honorary research associate at DPU, UCL, UK. She has published numerous peer-reviewed books, papers and book chapters, and professional articles, including the book ‘Organising Post-Disaster Reconstruction Processes’ and ‘Urban Change in Iran’.Iradj Moeini is a senior lecturer in architecture in Shahid Beheshti University (SBU), Tehran―where he has obtained his MA―and a practising architect in London. Having obtained his PhD from the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, UCL, on contemporary architecture theory and criticism, he is the author and co-author of numerous papers and two books, has also taught in Yazd, Tehran Azad, and Shariati universities, and worked in a range of Iranian and British practices in a professional capacity. A member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the Iranian Comparative Arts Circle, he is also an amateur photographer and musician.
