ALI AGHAEI
Director of the Project Irankoran

Ali AGHAEI is the Director of the Irankoran project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and hosted by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW, Berlin/Potsdam). He is a Research Associate at the Institute of Islamic Theology at the University of Paderborn and holds a MA and PhD in Quran and Hadith Studies from Usul al-Din College in Qom (2002) and Islamic Azad University in Tehran (2012). Aghaei has contributed to the writing and editing of entries in the Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam (Dāneshnāmeh-ye Jahān-e Eslām) while serving as member of the Academic Board at the Encyclopedia Islamica Foundation in Tehran. He was a post-doctorate fellow in the EUME research program of Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin (2013-2014) and a Research Fellow at the Corpus Coranicum project in the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (2014-2015). He has conducted philological, palaeographical and codicological research on Quranic manuscripts as part of the Paleocoran (2016) and Irankoran (2017-2020) projects, which aimed to bridge the gap between the textual history of the Quran and its reception in early Quranic manuscripts. Aghaei currently teaches hadith studies at the Institute of Islamic Theology at the University of Paderborn while pursuing his research interests in Quranic manuscripts.

MOHAMMAD ALI KHAVANIN ZADEH
Senior Researcher

Mohammad Ali KHAVANIN ZADEH is Junior Professor in Quran and Hadith Studies department at Kharazmi University (Tehran). He holds a PhD in Quran and Hadith Studies from the University of Tehran (2015). He has contributed to the entries of the Encyclopedia Of The Islamic World (Dāneshnāmeh-ye Jahān-e Eslām) of the Encyclopaedis Islamic Foundation (Tehran) and the Great Islamic Encyclopedia (Dāʾerat-o al-Maʿāref Bozorg-e Eslāmī) of the Great Islamic Encyclopedia Centre (Tehran) since 2005, and has been teaching and consulting in Iranian universities since 2011. In 2019, he joined the Irankoran and Corpus Coranicum projects (BBAW) to transliterate early Quranic manuscripts and develop a transcription system for digitalisation of the Ten readings of the Quran.

ELAHE SHAHPASAND
Senior Researcher

Roohullah Nazemi
Research Assistant

Mojtaba Mohammadi
Research Assistant

ZAHRA MOLLAEI ESHGABAD
Research Assistant

Zahra MOLLAEI ESHGABAD is a doctoral student in the field of Quran and Hadith Studies at Shiraz University. She has been studying ancient Quranic manuscripts since 2017 and gained experience while obtaining her master's degree at University of Quranic Sciences and Education, Mashhad (2018). During her master studies, she researched a number of Quran codices attributed to Shi'i Imams held at the library of Astan Quds Razavi. Since 2018, she is collaborating with the Corpus Coranicum project at Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) and the Irankoran project, working on the transliteration of Quranic manuscripts and transcription of variant readings of the Quran."

Azam Shahpasand
Research Assistant

Raheleh Shahpasand
Research Assistant

Fatemeh Nayyeri
Research Assistant

Mojgan Azimian
Research Assistant

Fatemeh Haji Akhoondi
Research Assistant