Dr Janet Blake is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Shahid Beheshti (Tehran), a member of the Iranian Expert Committee for ICH and a member of the Cultural Heritage Law Committee of the International Law Association and has acted as an International Consultant to UNESCO since 1999, mostly in the field of intangible cultural heritage and implementing the 2003 Convention. She has facilitated capacity-building workshops in Armenia, Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan and has provided professional advice on policy and legislative development for safeguarding ICH in Palestine and Iran. Since 1999, she has acted as an international expert for UNESCO in the field of intangible cultural heritage. She drafted the legal and technical preliminary study that led the way to developing the 2003 Convention, and she was Rapporteur of the Restricted (expert) Drafting Group for the first draft text of the Convention. Subsequently, she has prepared a report for the Executive Board on safeguarding endangered and indigenous languages (2008), reports for the Intergovernmental Committee on periodic reporting (2012-2018) and is currently working on revising the periodic reporting mechanism (2018-19).