Dr Iain Shearer

Iain is an archaeologist who works across the Middle East, Northern Africa, Central Asia, Caucasus, China, India, Pakistan, USA, Balkans, Europe and UK. He took his degrees at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, where he worked on commercial and research excavations, before being appointed Sackler Scholar for Afghanistan and Iran at The British Museum in 2010. While working at UCL, he was asked to join the London Metropolitan Police Art & Antiques Unit Special Crime Directorate 6 as a Special Constable and is still actively involved in research and restitution of looted cultural heritage. Iain was made a Fellow of The Royal Asiatic Society in 2008 and visiting lecturer at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis Maryland. He enjoys popularising history for a non-specialist audience, leading numerous lecture tours during the last twenty years for Oxford and Cambridge Universities, The British Museum, Art Gallery of NSW, and regularly gives public lectures at cultural institutions worldwide. Iain is the author of Lonely Planet’s Guide to Saudi Arabia and the Haj (2010), an author of Lonely Planet’s Guide to Iran (2012) and presenter of Lonely Planet & National Geographic’s ‘Road Less Travelled: Kazakhstan’.