Prof. Dr. Alberto Cantera (Freie Universität Berlin) will deliver the 9th Ratanbai Katrak Lectures on Zoroastrianism in Spring (Trinity Term) and Autumn (Michaelmas Term) of 2023. These six lectures will represent the 101st anniversary of their establishment at the University of Oxford in 1922 by Dr. Nanabhai Navroji Katrak in memory of his deceased wife, Ratanbai Katrak. Provision was made for the University of Oxford to invite a distinguished scholar to deliver a series of six public lectures in the English language on some subject connected with the study of the religion of Zoroaster. The purpose of the Lecturership is to promote the study of the religion of Zoroaster and of its later developments from a theological, philological, and historical point of view. Illustrious scholars of the study of Zoroastrianism in the 20th century such as Louis H. Gray (Columbia University), Sir Harold W. Bailey (Cambridge University), Walter B. Henning (SOAS, UC Berkeley), Ilya Gershevitch (Cambridge University), Mary Boyce (SOAS), John Hinnells (University of Manchester), and Philippe Gignoux (EPHE, Paris) have been the Ratanbai Katrak Lecturer.

These lectures will also stream on Zoom: us06web.zoom.us/j/81728008051
Contact: yuhan.vevaina@ames.ox.ac.uk

Prof. Dr. Alberto Cantera is the Director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the Freie
Universität Berlin. The focus of his work is on Zoroastrian textuality from Antiquity
until the modern age, especially the Avestan texts, their reception in Late Antiquity, and
their use in Zoroastrian rituals. He is responsible for transforming our collective
understanding of the Avestan texts by emphasising their ritual character and is engaged
in the monumental task of describing and understanding the history of Zoroastrian
ritual practices. Since 2008 he has been the Director of the Avestan Digital Archive, the
largest collection of Avestan manuscripts published online. Furthermore, he is the
principal investigator of a long-term project preparing a new edition of all the Avestan texts used in the Zoroastrian
rituals: Corpus Avesticum Berolinense. He is also one of the principal investigators of another long-term project in
collaboration with the universities of Bochum and Cologne: The Digital Corpus and the Dictionary of Middle
Persian. His published books include: Studien zur Pahlavi-Übersetzung des Avesta (Wiesbaden, 2004); Vers une édition
de la liturgie longue zoroastrienne: pensées et travaux préliminaires (Leuven, 2014); and Introduction à l’avestique
recent (Girona, 2019) together with Céline Redard; He is currently preparing a project on the Pahlavi nērangs or
ritual instructions in the Iranian liturgical manuscripts.