Each semester, the School of History of Art welcomes guest speakers and colleagues to deliver an hour-long seminar on their research. The seminars run on a weekly basis through the two semesters but for a few exceptions, on Thursdays, from 17:15 GMT. The talks are followed by a Q&A session.
The series provides fantastic opportunities to hear from art historians, critics, curators and artists from the UK, Europe and beyond about their work. The seminars are free and open to all.
History of Art coordinator:
Dr Yashaswini Chandra - ychandra@ed.ac.uk
2025/26
18 September 2025 | Dr Kuang-Yi Ku | 2025 Spotlight Taiwan Project - Challenging Biomedical Paradigm through Art and Design | 17:15 - 18:30 GMT | View event >
25 September 2025 | Prof. Richard J. Williams | The Expressway World | 17:15 - 18:30 GMT | View event >
2 October 2025 | Dr Francesca Berry | Atelier-Chambre and Chambre: The Sexual Politics of Intimiste Space | 17:15 - 18:30 GMT | View event >
9 October 2025 | Dr Carly Boxer | Pictures of Health: Medicine, the Body and its Image in Late Medieval England | 17:15 - 18:30 GMT | View event >
14 October 2025 | Dr Verónica Uribe Hanabergh | The Art in Translation Lecture - Restitution, Repatriation and Return in Latin America: Understanding Multiple Perspectives through National Case Studies | 17:15 - 18:30 GMT | View event >
17 October 2025 | Dr Daisy Black | Yde and Olive: A Medieval Love Story | 17:15 - 19:00 GMT | View event >
23 October 2025 | Dr Louise C. De Mello | Lessons from Latin America: Weaving Relationships and Reconciling Colonial Legacies through Museum Collections | 17:15 - 18:30 GMT | View event >
6 November 2025 | Jui-Chung Yao | 2025 Spotlight Taiwan Project - Hospice Care of the Post-Republican | 17:15 - 18:30 GMT | View event >
13 November 2025 | Prof. Sophie Page | Images of the Magician in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Incunabula of Pliny the Elder's Natural History | 17:15 - 18:30 GMT | View event >
20 November 2025 | Prof. Katherine Butler Schofield | Keeper of the Flame: Miyan Himmat Khan and the Last of the Mughal Emperors | 17:15 - 18:30 GMT | View event >
4 December 2025 | Dr-Ing. Dipl. Holzwirt Thomas Eißing and Dr Nathalie-Josephine von Möllendorff | The Construction of Meaning: Painted Architecture in Rogier van der Weyden’s Nativities | 17:15 - 18:30 GMT | View event >
Previous seminar series
2024/25
Semester Two
16 January 2025 | Katharina S. Rode-Kaya | An Exclusive Fashion? Reconsidering the Socio-historical Background of Akita Ranga Painting | 17:15 - 18:15 GMT
23 January 2025 | Dr Rachel Silveri | Sonia Delaunay | 17:15 - 18:15 GMT
30 January 2025 | Dr Lizzie Swarbrick | Rosslyn Chapel: Forging a Path through New Discoveries and Evolving Fictions | 17:15 - 18:15 GMT
6 February 2025 | Dr Falvia Vanni | Sculpting Light in Byzantine Greece, 9th–15th Century: Workshops, Climate and Devotion | 17:15 - 18:15 GMT
13 February 2025 | Anne Lyden | From Glasgow to Edinburgh, by way of Los Angeles: A Curatorial Journey | 17:15 - 18:15 GMT
27 February 2025 | Dr Lucy Weir | Playing the Hard Man: André Stitt’s Confrontational Engagement with the Legacy of the Troubles | 17:15 - 18:15 GMT
6 March 2025 | Dr Jess Bailey | Figuring Precarity: Sex Work, Consent and Drawing circa 1500 | 17:15 - 18:15 GMT
20 March 2025 | Dr Jessica Barker | In-Jokes: Art and Unruliness at Norwich Priory | 17:15 - 18:15 GMT
27 March 2025 | Shannon Taggart | Séance: Spiritualism, Photography and the Search for Ectoplasm | 17:15 - 18:15 GMT
3 April 2025 | Professor Charissa Terranova | Feedback to Feedforward: Between Organicism and Cybernetics in 20th-century Artscience | 17:15 - 18:15 GMT | *THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED*
Semester One
19 September 2024 | Dr Meng-Hung Su | Self-Exoticism | 17:15 - 18:30 GMT
26 September 2024 | Eleanor Clayton | Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes | 17:15 - 18:30 GMT
3 October 2024 | Dr Stephanie O’Rourke | The French Landscape and the Colonial Forest | 17:15 - 18:30 GMT
10 October 2024 | Professor Rajyashree Pandey | Disgust, Compassion, and Laughter: Excrement in the Buddhist Narratives of Medieval Japan | 17:15 - 18:30
17 October 2024 | Professor Cheng-hua Wang | Cityscapes at the Qianlong Emperor’s (1736–1795) Court: The Rise of Spatial Performativity and Imperial Territoriality | 17:15 - 18:30
24 October 2024 | Dr Amy Tobin | Varieties of Togetherness: Some Approaches to Feminist Art History | 17:00 - 18:30
14 November 2024 | Dr Stina Barchan | Archiving Dada | 17:15 - 18:30
21 November 2024 | Dr Jessica Varsallona | 'O Lord, I love the house where you live’: The Paintings of the Kalenderhane Mosque in Istanbul | 17:15 - 18:30
28 November 2024 | Dr Javier Ortiz-Echagüe | The Photography of the Future: The Triumph of Photo-Painting and the End of the Arts in Albert Robida’s Novels | 17:15 - 18:30
5 December 2024 | Dr Catherine Spencer | Abstract Subjects: Art, Borders and ‘Britain' | 17:15 - 18:30
12 December 2024 | Professor Sarah E. James | Three Radioactive Fairytales from the Former East Germany: An Ultra-Violet Art History of Afterlives | 17:15 - 18:30