Associate Professor of Pre-Islamic Iranian studies. His specialization is the study of civilizations and cultures of the pre-Islamic Iranian world through their material remains and visual representations. His research interests encompass the archaeology, art, and religions of pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia, including Zoroastrianism (with a particular focus on religious iconography), the culture of the Eurasian nomads, the Sogdian civilization, and the “Silk Roads”.

            Prof. Shenkar is currently director (together with Dr. Sharof Kurbanov of the Tajik Academy of Sciences) of the excavations at the Sogdian town of Sanjar-Shah (5^th-9^th centuries CE) in northern Tajikistan.

She is the author of Policing Egyptian Women: Sex, Law and Medicine in Egypt 1850-1882 (Syracuse University Press, 2011) and Global Women, Colonial Ports: Regulated Prostitution in the Interwar Middle East (SUNY press, 2016). She is also the coeditor, with Cyrus Schayegh and Avner Wishnitzer, of A Global Middle East: Mobility, Materiality and Culture in the Modern Age, 1880-1940 (IB Tauris, 2014); and co-editor, with Magaly Rodriguez and Davide Rodogno, of The League of Nations’ Work on Social Issues (UN Press, 2016).

Prof. Shaham’s main fields of research are family law reform and its application in the shariʿa courts (especially in Egypt); the legal status of non-Muslims in modern Islamic societies; expert witnesses at the shariʿa courts; the modern discourse on the renewal of Islamic law. His main publications are: Family and the Courts in Modern Egypt (Brill, 1997); (editor); Law, Custom and Statute in the Muslim World: Studies in Honor of Aharon Layish (Brill, 2007); The Expert Witness in Islamic Courts: Medicine and Crafts in the Service of Law (University of Chicago Press, 2010) . He is currently working on a book-length study of the juristic theory and legal opinions of Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.