Dr Helen Philon

Helen Philon is an archaeologist, scholar and lifelong academic with an M.Ph. in Pre-Islamic Art from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She wrote her PhD thesis on Bahmani architecture in the Deccan at the same institution. Helen has worked in the Middle East and South Asia, travelling extensively throughout these regions, and has published a long list of works on architecture and ceramics, building a flourishing career as a leading expert in her field, in the process.

Helen fell in love with the Deccan while studying the region for her doctoral dissertation. Her desire to preserve the region’s monuments and ancient works of architectural genius for posterity grew out of a particular affinity for places, which, like the Deccan, serve as crossroads or meeting points between different identities and different worlds. In its ruins and reliquaries she saw an unending dialogue of more than two thousand years.

Helen was instrumental in the founding of the Deccan Heritage Foundation  in the UK and India as well as that of the American Friends of the Deccan Heritage Foundation in the US.