Renata Holod

Renata Holod is Professor, and Curator in the Near East Section, Penn Museum. She received her BA in Islamic Studies from the University of Toronto, MA in the History of Art from University of Michigan and Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Harvard University.

She has done archaeological and architectural fieldwork in Syria, Iran, Morocco, Central Asia and Turkey, and on the island of Jerba, Tunisia. Her most recent project is a collaborative study of the grave goods of a Qipchaq kurgan in the Black Sea steppe of the thirteenth century.

Professor Holod has served as Convenor, Steering Committee Member, and Master Jury Chair of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. As architectural consultant, she has worked with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), Arthur Ericson Architects, Venturi Scott-Brown Architects, Mitchell/Giurgola Associates, H2L2, and Michael Graves & Associates, and the Center for Architecture in NYC. She was President, Board of Trustees, The Ukrainian Museum, 2013-2017.

She was Clark Professor at Williams College and the Clark Institute in 2002. In 2004, the Islamic Environmental Research Centre honored her with an Award for outstanding work in Islamic Architectural Studies. In 2010, she received the Provost’s Award for Distinguished Ph.D. Teaching and Mentoring.

She co-authored and edited: City in the Desert: Archaeological Expedition to Qasr al-Hayr al- Sharqi; Architecture and Community: Building in the Islamic World Today; Modern Turkish Architecture; The Mosque and the Modern World; The City in the Islamic World; and An Island Through Time: Jerba Studies.

A collaborative project studied grave goods from a kurgan in the Black Sea steppe of Ukraine.

She co-curated the exhibition “Archaeologists and Travelers in Ottoman Lands,” at the Penn Museum, and at Pera Museum, Istanbul. She worked with Norm Badler and Computer Graphics@Penn, School of Engineering to recreate interior lighting of the Mosque of Cordoba diurnally and seasonally: http://cg.cis.upenn.edu/hms/research/Archaeology/.