Background
Burzine Waghmar was born on May 4, 1973. At SOAS he holds affiliations with the SOAS South Asia Institute (SSAI), Centre for the Study of Pakistan (CSP) and Centre for Iranian Studies (CIS). He is currently the Arts & Humanities Lead Librarian, SOAS Library. He was formerly a Senior Teaching Fellow and Editor of the Circle of Inner Asian Art newsletter.
As consultant, commentator and external auditor, Burzine Waghmar's oral expertise (radio, TV) and written submissions (commissioned reports, depositions, briefings) range over the cultural history, religions, and socio-political conditions of minorities (both confessional and ethno-linguistic) of the subcontinent, with particular focuses on HUMINT (intelligence, insurgency and counter-terrorism) across Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, for: the U.S. National Intelligence Council; Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO); Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), UK; Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), UK; Ministry of Defence Languages Examination Board (MODLEB), UK; International Institute for Strategic Studies (ISS), London; HSBC Holdings, UK; BBC News 24, BBC World TV, BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service; Channel 4, UK; Al-Jazeera English (AJE), Qatar; Press TV, Iran; Times NOW TV, India; Republic TV, India; and Voice of America (VOA).
Besides French, German, Italian, Persian and Russian, his reading and research skills include Old and Middle Iranian languages of historic Iran and Central Asia (Old Persian, Avestan, Pahlavi, Parthian, Sogdian, Khotanese, Bactrian, Khwarezmian); Urdu, Pashto, Balochi, Kashmiri, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi and those Indo-Iranian dialects and communities along the Irano-Pak, Sino-Pak and Af-Pak borders (Balochistan, Trans-Karakoram Tract, Gilgit-Baltistan/Northern Areas, NWFP/Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, FATA).
