I am a specialist in early modern art histories and material cultures of the body. Prior to joining the Courtauld, I taught for three years as a faculty member at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich while simultaneously working as a research associate in the director’s office at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte. I have also held extended research positions at the Warburg Institute in London and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence.

My work examines how images and objects shaped the ways that bodies, behaviors, and experiences were understood, fashioned, and politicized in the global early modern. In so doing, I explore a broad notion of art history beyond the traditional canon that embraces interdisciplinary and critical methodologies. Currently, I am finalizing a monograph based on my doctoral thesis about early modern armor – awarded with the Zentralinstitut’s Applied Arts Prize – that deals with the interplay of military material culture and humanist body politics, thus embedding armor within contemporary medical, pedagogical, political, and colonial discourses. I am also interested in the histories of prosthetics and more generally the dialogue between art history and disability studies as examined, for instance, in a co-edited volume on Dis_ability Art History.

My second book project, tentatively titled Early Modern Art Histories of the Mind, seeks to address art’s ability to promote analytic engagement with the self – a shift that, in my reading, anticipated “modern” psychological practices. Leading up to this new topic, I am preparing two forthcoming publications: the first is an article, titled “Suggestive Materials,” about the therapeutic uses of artworks in Sigmund Freud’s consultation room; the second, a co-edited volume, questions the concept of the apotropaic as a means of negotiating art’s affect and emotional impact.

Other projects include a co-edited special issue of Selva, as well as an article, on East German Marxist art history due to be published this year.