Dr. Meher Mistry

Written By PARZOR Foundation

Dr. Meher Mistry is the Head, Department of History at Ramniranjan Jhunjhunwala College (Autonomous), Mumbai and has been teaching History to under-graduate students since the past 17 years. She has a doctorate from the Asiatic Society, University of Mumbai on “A History of Some Parsi Settlements on the Western Coast of India (1600 to 1850) - A Study of Bharuch, Ankleshwar, Khambhat”. Her research interest includes Parsi community history, maritime history, and business history and contemporary Indian and World history. She has been the recipient of the Gulestan Billimoria Fellowship of the Asiatic Society and the Ratan Tata Travel Grant for visiting the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. She was associated with the WZCF-Sanjan – Bahrot: Archaeological and Conservation Project, the UNESCO PARZOR Project and the Research Project on The Genealogy of the Seth and Sethna Family: 1930 -2010 at the K R Cama Oriental Institute, Mumbai. She has presented papers at several conferences and has more than 15 publications to her credit. 

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Dr. Kerman Daruwalla
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Dr. Kerman Daruwalla is the project coordinator for the TISS-Parzor Academic Programme. Kerman completed his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London in 2021 for the thesis titled ‘Becoming an Athravan: A study of the training of Zoroastrian Priests in India’, for which was awarded the European Research Council (ERC) Studentship during 2016-2019. He holds an MA in Avestan-Pahlavi from the University of Mumbai, and an MA in Iranian Studies from SOAS, London.

Ashdeen Z. Lilaowala
Ashdeen Z. Lilaowala

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Lilaowala studied textile design at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, following which he conducted extensive research on Parsi Embroidery for the Ministry of Textiles alongside UNESCO’s Parzor Foundation that took him on a journey across China, Iran and India.

His seminal research on the traditional and vanishing craft of Zoroastrian Kusti weaving has been published as a book, Threads of Continuity – The Zoroastrian Craft of Kusti Weaving.

Dr. Meher Mistry
Dr. Meher Mistry

Dr. Meher Mistry is the Head, Department of History at Ramniranjan Jhunjhunwala College (Autonomous), Mumbai and has been teaching History to under-graduate students since the past 17 years. She has a doctorate from the Asiatic Society, University of Mumbai on “A History of Some Parsi Settlements on the Western Coast of India (1600 to 1850) - A Study of Bharuch, Ankleshwar, Khambhat”. Her research interest includes Parsi community history, maritime history, and business history and contemporary Indian and World history. She has been the recipient of the Gulestan Billimoria Fellowship of the Asiatic Society and the Ratan Tata Travel Grant for visiting the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. She was associated with the WZCF-Sanjan – Bahrot: Archaeological and Conservation Project, the UNESCO PARZOR Project and the Research Project on The Genealogy of the Seth and Sethna Family: 1930 -2010 at the K R Cama Oriental Institute, Mumbai. She has presented papers at several conferences and has more than 15 publications to her credit.

Prof S. Siva Raju
Prof S. Siva Raju

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Prof Almut Hintze
Prof Almut Hintze

Almut Hintze is a globally renowned scholar in Avestan language. She is the Zartoshty Brothers Professor of Zoroastrianism at SOAS, University of London, and Fellow of the British Academy. Her field is Zoroastrianism and ancient and middle Iranian languages. Her major publications include a study of the semantics of words for 'reward' in Vedic and Avestan (2000), commentaries and annotated editions of Zoroastrian sacred texts, such as the Avestan Zamyād Yašt (1994) and the Yasna Haptanghaiti (2007), and, with Dastur F M Kotwal, a facsimile edition of the Khorde Avesta and Yasht manuscript E1. She currently directs a collaborative project on the Multimedia Yasna, funded by European Research Council (2016-2022), to produce an interactive film of a complete Yasna ritual, electronic tools for editing Avestan texts, and a text-critical edition, translation, commentary and dictionary of the Avestan Yasna.

Prof Kavas Kapadia
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Dr. Coomi S. Vevaina
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Dr. Shernaz Cama
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Lt. Gen. Adi M. Sethna - The Founding President of Parzor Foundation
Lt. Gen. Adi M. Sethna - The Founding President of Parzor Foundation

Lieutenant General Adi Meherji Sethna, PVSM, AVSM was an Indian Army General who served as the Vice Chief of Army Staff. He guided the Delhi Parsi Anjuman and the Federation of Zoroastrian Anjumans for 20 years, and in 1999 was invited to be the Founder President of Parzor.

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