The Interpretation of Nizami's Cultural Heritage in the Contemporary Period: Shared past and cultural legacy in the transition from the prism of national literature criteria

Rahilya Geybullayeva holds a PhD (1989) from Lomonosov Moscow State University and is the founder of the Azerbaijan Comparative Literature Association. She is a recipient of UNESCO, Carnegie, and Fulbright Fellowships; served as a visiting scholar at SOAS University of London (Intercultural Dialogue Regular Programme), at the Comparative Literature Department, University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA (project "Conception of National Literature"), at the Berkeley University of California (Berkeley Program in Eurasian and East European Studies), and at the Anthropology Department of Harvard University. Her ongoing project is identity through the prism of Past in the future: rules to follow at the Anthropology Department, Harvard University.

Christine van Ruymbeke holds a PhD (1997) in Persian studies from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) and taught for several years at her home university before moving to Cambridge in 2002. She is Ali Reza and Muhamed Soudavar Reader in Persian literature and culture at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in Cambridge (UK). She is a fellow, tutor and the college praelector at Darwin College, University of Cambridge (UK). She is a long-standing member of the councils of multiple learned societies, including the Royal Asiatic and Ancient India and Iran Trust. She works on classical (medieval and pre-modern) Persian literature, with a special focus on the masnavis of Nezami of Ganja (12th c. AD) and on the Persian versions of the Kalila and Dimna fables (12th–16th c. AD).