Nyaz Azeez Awmar

Biography

As Director of the Koya Civilization Museum, Nyaz is responsible for the general management of the institution and its employees. Nyaz also leads the museum’s archaeological team and spends much of the year completing field surveys and excavation campaigns, and working with national and international teams. Nyaz’s specialization is in pottery – which the Koya Civilization Museum has a large archaeological collection of – and much effort is put in to collecting, registering, and using preventive conservation methods in the collection. Nyaz previously worked as a researcher at the Koya Civilization Museum, where he was responsible for collections management, cataloguing and completing object inventories.

Nyaz obtained a master’s degree in archaeology from the University of Valencia, Spain. As a student assistant he participated in the excavation at Tell Qasra in Ankwa, north of Erbil. Later on, he worked as a pottery specialist for the Antiquity Service of the Kurdish Regional Government of Iraq on the Archaeological Survey of Koya (ASK) Project (University of Innsbruck, Austria).

From May to June 2010, Nyaz participated as a representative of the Antiquity Service of the Kurdish Regional Government at the excavations at Tell Satu Qala, located east of Taq Taq. This project was in cooperation between the Salahaddin University and the Universities of Leiden (Netherlands) and Leipzig (Germany). Nyaz returned to participate in these excavations in September and October of 2011.

To support heritage efforts in Iraq, TARII partnered with Koya Civilisation Museum and the Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage on a project dedicated to improving and supporting the archaeological civilisation museum of Koya, located within the historic Qishla. This undertaking is a multi-stage project beginning with the professional preservation and conservation of archaeological artifacts from the museum. This phase was funded by the German consulate in Erbil with conservation work conducted by the Iraqi Insititute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage with the Koya Civilisation Museum. The project is dedicated to improving and supporting the local heritage museum in Koya.

Nyaz has presented at several conferences, including:

• 10th World Archaeological Congress (WAC-10) in Darwin, Australia from 22nd – 28th June, 2025. Nyaz presented a paper titled Deconstructing Inequality in Scientific Communication: Preserving Memories and Raising Cultural Awareness in the Region of Koisanjaq/Koya (IRAQ). 
• 66th Rencontre Assyriology International (RAI 66) from 25th-29th July 2022, Mainz-Germany, Johannes Gutenberg, University Mainz. Nyaz presented his article Local Chronologies of Northern Iraq: the Case of Qala Shita. 
• 13th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Department of Cross-Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen.
• 68th Rencontre Assyriology International Conference (RAI 68), Leiden, Netherlands, 17th-20th July 2023. The conference was organised by Assyriologists from several institutions within Leiden University and the National Museum of Antiquities. Nyaz presented his paper, The Challenge of Preserving Memories and Raising Cultural Awareness in the Region of Koya. 
• 69th Rencontre Assyriology International Conference (RAI 69), University of Helsinki, Finalnd, 8th July-12th July 2024. Nyaz presented his work under the title Fragmented Polities of the Trans Tigrine Region: Recent Research in the Region of Koysinjaq, Erbil, Iraq. 

At the British Museum
During his time on the International Training Programme Nyaz was based in the Middle East Department and spent his partner placement at The Collection: Art and Archaeology in Lincolnshire and Nottingham University Museum.

In 2019 participants were asked to plan and propose a temporary exhibition around an object from the Museum’s collection working within the theme of journeys.  Nyaz worked with Buket Babatas Aydin (Turkey) and Abdelrahman Sedeeg (Sudan) on his Object in focus project. Their exhibition proposal was titled Journey Towards Belief.

Nyaz’s place on the International Training Programme was generously supported by the Thriplow Charitable Trust.