Deborah Klimburg-Salter is an art historian and emeritus professor for non-European art history at the Department of Art History of the University of Vienna. She was also director of the research platform Center for Research and Documentation of Inner and South Asia (CIRDIS). Currently she directs the project "Cultural Formation and Transformation: Shahi Art and Architecture from Afghanistan to the Western Frontier at the Dawn of the Islamic Era" financed by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and dedicated to transdisciplinary research.