Muzaffer Özgüleş, PhD
This presentation/demonstration will introduce my existing mobile apps, Timeline Travel and Palimpsest Cities, for architectural heritage alongside three interconnected future projects I am currently developing:
1. Architect Sinan Adventure – Animation Film and Video Game
Based on my children's novel Mimar Sinan Macerası (Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2016; now in its 23rd edition), this project envisions a 13-episode animated series and/or feature-length animation film and potentially a video game centred on the life and works of the Ottoman master architect Mimar Sinan. The book's game-within-a-story structure lends itself naturally to interactive media, and I have retained the animation, film, and game rights specifically with this in mind. Please watch this short video about the book, narrated by me in Turkish yet with English subtitles, to have a brief idea about the book and its game content.
2. A Popular Science Animation Channel for Architectural History
An animation-based popular science channel — inspired by Kurzgesagt but focused initially on architectural history — that would be the first of its kind producing content with multilingual versions. As a popular science author of 20 years with a background in electronic engineering, science and technology policy, and architectural history, I see this channel as the natural media arm connecting all of other projects and a direct continuation of the expertise gained/presented in the Architect Sinan Adventure animation film.
3. Architect Sinan Toys
A Lego-inspired construction toy line that allows children — and adults — to build accurate, scaled models of Sinan's mosques, bridges, aqueducts, and baths from architectural building blocks (arches, domes, vaults, columns). The brand concept, provisionally called MiSiO, is designed to expand beyond Sinan to other architectural traditions (Byzantine, Gothic, Baroque) and other architects, positioning it as a culturally grounded alternative in the construction toy market. I have retained the necessary rights as well, and developed a business venture on this after participating in an incubation program in Turkey.
Together, these projects tell a story about how rigorous research can be reimagined as public engagement.
About
The Barakat Trust Research Fellow, The Khalili Research Centre, University of Oxford Asst. Prof., Alanya University, Dept. of Interior Architecture
Muzaffer Özgüleş received his BSc in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2003. He also received his MSc from METU in the Science and Technology Policy Studies program. He received his PhD in History of Architecture from Istanbul Technical University in 2013.
He taught architectural history at Plato Higher Education College in Istanbul between 2010 and 2014. He received the Barakat Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and spent the 2014-2015 academic year at the Khalili Research Centre at the University of Oxford.
He worked at Gaziantep University’s Faculty of Architecture as an assistant professor between 2016 and 2021. He was the coordinator of the Erasmus+ project entitled “Timeline Travel: An Alternative Tool for Architectural History Learning and Teaching”, which was chosen as Good Practice Example. He is also writing, translating, editing and proof-reading architectural history and children’s books; and writing for Kumbara and Mini Kumbara children’s magazines since 2009.
He has been working at Alanya University as an assistant professor since September 2021. His recently funded Erasmus+ KA220 HED project started in December 2022 and is going to be completed in April 2025.
Bita Pourvash
This presentation explores the curatorial possibilities and challenges of exhibiting digital simulation artworks in dialogue with historic and contemporary works as part of broader exhibition narratives. Focusing on the exhibition Game On! at the Aga Khan Museum, the talk examines how participatory digital artworks can expand curatorial approaches by shifting visitors from observational viewing toward immersive and embodied experience.
At the centre of the discussion is Damask Rose (2026), a digital simulation artwork by Syrian-Canadian artist and technologist Jawa El Khash. Inspired by the 18th-century fountain of the Azem Palace in Damascus, the work invites visitors to navigate a digitally reconstructed environment while encountering fragments of history, memory, and material culture. Drawing on Syrian objects in the Museum’s collection alongside the artist’s personal memories and processes of digital reconstruction, the work proposes new ways of engaging with visual and architectural heritage beyond static display.
Using this artwork as a case study, the presentation reflects on the curatorial and spatial questions that emerge when exhibiting works that must be navigated and experienced rather than simply viewed. It considers how interactive digital installations shape visitor movement, pacing, participation, and collective engagement within gallery spaces, and how these behaviours in turn influence exhibition design and interpretive strategies.
More broadly, the presentation explores how digital simulation artworks can reshape exhibition experiences through storytelling, historical interpretation, and multisensory encounters with visual culture within museum environments.
About
Curator, Aga Khan Museum
Since joining in 2012, Bita has been involved in numerous exhibitions and curatorial projects, including co-curating Light: Visionary Perspectives (2024), Transforming Traditions: The Arts of 19th-century Iran (2018) and curating contemporary installations Cultured Pallets (2023) and Faig Ahmed: Dissolving Order (2019). In her role, Bita researches the Museum Collections, working closely on the biannual themed installations in the Gallery.
She has contributed to several exhibition catalogues and delivered lectures on the Museum’s collection. Prior to joining the Museum, she worked as a researcher at the Royal Ontario Museum and as a lecturer at York University, Semnan University, and the Higher Education Center for Iranian Heritage.
Mounir Saifi, PhD
This presentation explores how the Andalusi past is reinterpreted, mobilized, and circulated in contemporary Arabic historical television drama and digital media environments. Focusing on influential series such as Ṣaqr Quraysh (2002), Rabīʿ Qurṭuba (2003), and Mulūk al-Ṭawāʾif (2005), it examines how these productions narratively and visually reimagine Muslim Iberia, mobilizing themes of nostalgia, loss, and civilizational memory.
Building on approaches from cultural memory studies and visual culture, the presentation also investigates how these televised representations continue to circulate across digital platforms, including YouTube and short-form video environments. In these contexts, fragments of Andalusi narratives—scenes, quotations, and visual motifs—are re-edited, recontextualized, and reinterpreted by diverse audiences, generating new layers of meaning that extend beyond their original broadcast contexts.
By combining close media analysis with the construction of a digital corpus of online circulation (including video uploads, platform metadata, and user commentary), the presentation considers how digital infrastructures shape the visibility, reception, and reinterpretation of historical narratives. In doing so, it advances a perspective on trans-Mediterranean cultural memory that highlights how the imagery of al-Andalus continues to function as a dynamic and contested site of historical imagination in contemporary digital culture
About
Independent Researcher
Mounir Saifi holds a PhD in Human Sciences from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2025), completed within the EU-funded Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network Mediating Islam in the Digital Age (MIDA). He also holds an MA in Semitic Studies from Sorbonne University, Paris, and a Magister in Translation Studies from Algeria. His doctoral research was conducted at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), within a transnational and transdisciplinary framework examining the impact of digital technologies on issues related to Islam.
His current research focuses on the contemporary afterlives of al-Andalus in visual and digital culture, with particular attention to Arabic television drama, cultural memory, and the politics of representation. More broadly, he is interested in how media forms mediate historical narratives and shape collective imaginaries in the digital age.
Isabella (Izzy) Inskip (PhD Candidate)
In 2024/2025 I took part in an eight-month internship, facilitated by the Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Cultures and Collections. The aim of the internship was to create a historically informed video game set in tenth century Cordoba, Digital Munya 3. Within this internship I became part of the history team, working to provide historical research to inform everything from character and set design to plot points and game mechanics. Whilst I had studied the visual culture of the premodern Islamic world before, this was the first time I had been asked to use my academic training as an Art Historian to help create a fully immersive environment.
This paper will examine my experience of taking part in this internship and how I have integrated some of the methods I used while researching for Digital Munya 3 into my current Doctoral research. I will also look at how digital visualisations tools can aid in highlighting gaps in our knowledge and helping us to engage with educated guesswork. In doing so, I hope to advocate for benefits of the holistic study of the premodern world.
About
PhD Candidate, University of Edinburgh
Isabella (Izzy) Inskip focuses on South Asian and Mughal visual culture, using digital visualisation to explore the social and political significance of Mughal encampments during the 17th c.
She is currently a PhD candidate in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh, where she also works as a Multimedia Technician in the uCreate Makerspace.
Izzy has an undergraduate degree in Fine Art and a Master’s (MSc) degree in Global Premodern Art from the University of Edinburgh. During her undergraduate degree, Izzy studied Sculpture and History of Art, developing her practice as a digital sculptor as well as her interest in pre-modern Islamic visual culture.
She is passionate about historically - informed storytelling and creating accessible outputs from academic research.
Deniz Vural
In a video game market dominated by Western game studios, the presence of Orientalist narratives in games depicting the Islamicate world and cultures is not entirely surprising. However, although the market is diversifying with more video game studios and developers from outside North America and Europe joining the production lines, the misrepresentation of Islamicate cultures in the market remains prevalent. This is partially due to the fact that non-Western companies and creators can misrepresent their own cultures and histories and therefore also disseminate Orientalist stereotypes.
This talk aims to identify and analyse examples of (self-)Orientalism in not only video games but also other examples of new media by studios based in the MENA region, focusing primarily on Turkish video games -including mobile games- and television series. Furthermore, this talk will also look at examples of Orientalist stereotypes being perpetuated by popular East Asian video game studios in their depiction of Islamicate cultures.
About
DLIVCC Researcher | GLAM
Deniz Vural specialises in Ottoman and Islamic Art History, and fashion history (MA, MScR, History and Art History, University of Edinburgh).
Her award-winning MSc thesis on the self-presentation of women in late Ottoman art looked specifically at the paintings and photographs of the artist Mihri Hanim (1885-1954).
Deniz was born and raised in Istanbul, and her areas of specialty include cultural exchanges and Westernisation in the Ottoman Empire, self-Orientalising in Ottoman and Turkish media and the representation of the Ottoman Empire in Western art and media.
Her experience is grounded in her work on Glaire's consultancy and collaboration with Ubisoft on Assassin's Creed Mirage, and our internal games R&D projects, including our follow-on Digital Munya 3 collaboration with Ubisoft World Design Director Maxime Durand.
She is interested in the possibilities that new media and especially video games offer for making Islamic visual and cultural history more accessible.
Muzaffer Özgüleş, PhD
This presentation/demonstration will introduce my existing mobile apps, Timeline Travel and Palimpsest Cities, for architectural heritage alongside three interconnected future projects I am currently developing:
1. Architect Sinan Adventure – Animation Film and Video Game
Based on my children's novel Mimar Sinan Macerası (Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2016; now in its 23rd edition), this project envisions a 13-episode animated series and/or feature-length animation film and potentially a video game centred on the life and works of the Ottoman master architect Mimar Sinan. The book's game-within-a-story structure lends itself naturally to interactive media, and I have retained the animation, film, and game rights specifically with this in mind. Please watch this short video about the book, narrated by me in Turkish yet with English subtitles, to have a brief idea about the book and its game content.
2. A Popular Science Animation Channel for Architectural History
An animation-based popular science channel — inspired by Kurzgesagt but focused initially on architectural history — that would be the first of its kind producing content with multilingual versions. As a popular science author of 20 years with a background in electronic engineering, science and technology policy, and architectural history, I see this channel as the natural media arm connecting all of other projects and a direct continuation of the expertise gained/presented in the Architect Sinan Adventure animation film.
3. Architect Sinan Toys
A Lego-inspired construction toy line that allows children — and adults — to build accurate, scaled models of Sinan's mosques, bridges, aqueducts, and baths from architectural building blocks (arches, domes, vaults, columns). The brand concept, provisionally called MiSiO, is designed to expand beyond Sinan to other architectural traditions (Byzantine, Gothic, Baroque) and other architects, positioning it as a culturally grounded alternative in the construction toy market. I have retained the necessary rights as well, and developed a business venture on this after participating in an incubation program in Turkey.
About
The Barakat Trust Research Fellow, The Khalili Research Centre, University of Oxford Asst. Prof., Alanya University, Dept. of Interior Architecture
Muzaffer Özgüleş received his BSc in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2003. He also received his MSc from METU in the Science and Technology Policy Studies program. He received his PhD in History of Architecture from Istanbul Technical University in 2013.
He taught architectural history at Plato Higher Education College in Istanbul between 2010 and 2014. He received the Barakat Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and spent the 2014-2015 academic year at the Khalili Research Centre at the University of Oxford.
He worked at Gaziantep University’s Faculty of Architecture as an assistant professor between 2016 and 2021. He was the coordinator of the Erasmus+ project entitled “Timeline Travel: An Alternative Tool for Architectural History Learning and Teaching”, which was chosen as Good Practice Example. He is also writing, translating, editing and proof-reading architectural history and children’s books; and writing for Kumbara and Mini Kumbara children’s magazines since 2009.
He has been working at Alanya University as an assistant professor since September 2021. His recently funded Erasmus+ KA220 HED project started in December 2022 and is going to be completed in April 2025.
Additional speakers - check back for more information, coming soon...
Independent Researcher
Mona Arafat is a multilingual arts and culture professional with over a decade of experience shaping interdisciplinary projects across the SWANA region and Europe. She specializes in bridging artistic practice with cultural heritage, community engagement, and political and ecological inquiry.
From producing refugee-centered radio programs to advising on contemporary art biennales, she has worked with artists, curators, and communities to reimagine the role of culture in times of crisis. Her work is deeply informed by her interest in decolonisation, Orientalism, and the representation of SWANA cultures in video games and digital media.
She is particularly passionate about transforming heritage into a living tool for ecological resilience and creating platforms that amplify the voices of underrepresented individuals through art, digital media, and storytelling.