Professor Robert Hillenbrand was educated at Cambridge and Oxford and has spent most of his career teaching at the University of Edinburgh, with visiting professorships at Princeton, UCLA, Bamberg, Dartmouth College, Leiden, New York, Cairo and Groningen. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Islamic Art at  the University of Edinburgh and Professorial Fellow of Art History at the University of St Andrews. 

His scholarly interests focus on Islamic architecture, painting and iconography, with particular reference to Iran and early Islamic Syria. He has published eleven books, including Imperial Images in Persian Painting; Islamic Art and Architecture; The Architecture of Ottoman Jerusalem: An Introduction; Studies in the Islamic Arts of the Book; Studies in Islamic Architecture (2 vols.); Studies in the Islamic Decorative Arts; The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque - A landmark of modern Islamic architecture; The Holy Ark of Isfahan - An unknown masterpiece from Mongol Iran; The Great Mongol Shahnama;  and the prize-winning Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning. 

In addition, he has co-authored, edited or co-edited fourteen books. He has also published some 210 articles on aspects of Islamic art and architecture. He has been Slade Professor of Art at Cambridge and is a Fellow of the British Academy. 

He won the King Faisal Prize for Islamic Studies in 2023, which made him and his wife Carole (a laureate in 2005) the first husband and wife to be so honoured in the history of the prize.