Steering Committee

Prince Amyn Aga Khan is His Highness the Aga Khan’s younger brother and grandson of the late Sir Sultan Mohamed Shah Aga Khan. Prince Amyn spent his early childhood in East Africa and Cairo during the Second World War and then attended Le Rosey School in Switzerland at war’s end. He received his BA magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1960, and an MA in comparative literature, also from Harvard, in 1963. Simultaneously, he studied piano at the New England Conservatory of Music.More recently, Prince Amyn’s deep interest in music has found outlets through his service on the juries of various music prizes, including the Premio Venezia and the Vendôme Prize, and his longtime membership on the board of directors of Silkroad (formerly the Silk Road Project), founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma to cultivate musical and artistic collaboration across cultures.

Since 1968, Prince Amyn has worked closely with his brother, His Highness the Aga Khan, in the domains of economic, social, and cultural development. Prince Amyn serves as a director on the boards of most of the institutions of the Aga Khan Development Network, including the Aga Khan Foundation, the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. The Trust for Culture focuses on the physical, social, cultural, and economic revitalisation of communities in the developing world. It includes the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Historic Cities Programme, the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Canada, and the Aga Khan Music Initiative and Music Awards, which Prince Amyn initiated, and whose Steering Committee he chairs.

Prince Amyn is a trustee of the World Monuments Fund and was a juror for the 10th International Architecture Exhibition award at the Venice Biennale in 2006.

He has served and serves on various committees of major museums including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Louvre in Paris, where he served for some years on the Louvre’s Acquisitions Committee. He is currently Chairman of the Board of the Aga Khan Museum.

Sir Jonathan Mills is an Australian-born composer and festival director. In the 1990s, he worked in the Architecture Faculty of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, leading courses in acoustic design. He is the composer of several award-winning operas and works for chamber ensemble and orchestra. His opera The Eternity Man was recognised by a Genesis Foundation commission in 2003 and his oratorio Sandakan Threnody won the Prix Italia in 2005. Eucalyptus, a new opera based on Murray Bail’s novel was commissioned by Opera Autralia for performances in 2021.

Jonathan Mills has been director of various music and multi-arts festivals in Australia and the UK, where he directed the Edinburgh International Festival from 2007-2014. He is currently Director of the Edinburgh International Culture Summit, a UNESCO-recognised biennial meeting held in conjunction with Edinburgh’s summer festivals and is the current President of the EFFE (Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe) International Jury. He is Visiting Professor at Edinburgh, Melbourne and Yale Universities. His work has been recognised by awards from the governments of Australia, Britain, France, Poland and South Korea.

Zeyba Rahman is Senior Program Officer for the Building Bridges Program at the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, an extension of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, whose mission is to improve the quality of people’s lives through the study, understanding, and appreciation of Islamic arts and cultures. The Building Bridges Program’s mission is to advance relationships and understanding between US-based Muslim and the broader non-Muslim communities for mutual well-being. It supports projects that engage and educate through literary, media-based, and performing arts experiences.

Prior to joining the Doris Duke Foundation, Ms. Rahman served in a variety of senior curatorial, consulting, and advisory roles for international music and arts festivals, museums, public arts programmes, and broadcasting networks, among them the Fez Festival of World Sacred Music, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Asia Society. Twice honoured by New York City’s mayoralty, Ms. Rahman is an advisor to Artworks for Freedom, and the subject of two television profiles as a global arts leader.

Luis Monreal is the General Manager of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Geneva (Switzerland). He is a conservation specialist, art historian and archaeologist. He has held positions in many institutions. He has been the Curator of Barcelona Museums (1965-1974) and Secretary General of the International Council of Museums ICOM (1974–1985). He was Director of the Getty Conservation Institute (Los Angeles, 1985–1990) and Director General, ‘La Caixa’ Foundation (Barcelona, 1990–2001). He was also a member of various archaeological missions in Nubia, Sudan, Egypt and Morocco. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on art and archaeology.

He is a board member of the Gala-Salvador Dalì Foundation (Spain), a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Barcelona, Spain), Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France) and Gran Cruz de Isabel la Católica (Spain).

Farrokh Derakhshani is Director of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. In this capacity, he has organised and participated in numerous international seminars and colloquia dealing with contemporary built environments. He has served as a jury member at schools of architecture in Europe, Africa and Asia and has lectured widely on topics ranging from disposable buildings to architecture in the Muslim World. He has also conceptualised, contributed to or overseen the production of a variety of publications, exhibitions and films on architecture and planning. His writings have appeared in many architectural journals internationally.

Mr. Derakhshani’s main field of specialisation is the contemporary architecture of Muslim societies. His professional work has included the design and construction management of large-scale public works and infrastructure projects in Iran, as well as architectural design in Paris and Geneva. He trained as an architect at the National University of Iran and later continued his studies at the School of Architecture in Paris.

Azim Nanji is currently Special Advisor to the Provost of the Aga Khan University, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa, a joint partnership between His Highness the Aga Khan and the Government of Canada. He has held many prestigious academic and administrative appointments, most recently as Senior Associate Director of the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University, where he was also lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies. From 1998 to 2008, Professor Nanji served as Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. He has published numerous books and articles on religion, Islam and Ismailism.

Within the Aga Khan Development Network, he has served as a member of the task force for the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC) and Vice Chair of the Madrasa-based Early Childhood Education Programme in East Africa. He served as a member of the Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1998, 2001 and 2016.