Courses are taught by members of The Courtauld Institute of Art’s teaching staff and other specialists in their field – in the majority Courtauld alumni - who are currently researching and teaching at leading British and international institutions.

LECTURERS’ BIOGRAPHIES


Dr Meri Arichi studied art history in London and Florence and worked at Christie’s before studying for a PhD in medieval Japanese art at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London).  She has been a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Art and Archaeology at SOAS since 2007 and has also taught at Birkbeck College, the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Dr Rebecca Arnold joined The Courtauld Institute as Lecturer in History of Dress and Textiles in 2009.  Before that she was a Research Fellow and Lecturer in the History of Design Department at the Royal College of Art and a Visiting Fellow at the Victoria & Albert Museum. In 2006, she was the first Guest Professor at the Centre for Fashion Studies at Stockholm University.  In 2001, she set up and ran the BA (Hons) Fashion History and Theory at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design. 

Beatrice Behlen studied fashion design in Germany before coming to London in 1989. Following a postgraduate course in the History of Dress at The Courtauld Institute, Beatrice worked as curatorial assistant at Kensington Palace. She then turned to teaching fashion and design students at several art colleges and worked at the contemporary art gallery Annely Juda Fine Art before returning to Kensington Palace. In 2007 Beatrice joined the Museum of London as Senior Curator of Fashion & Decorative Arts.

Dr Federico Botana wrote his doctoral thesis at The Courtauld under the supervision of Joanna Cannon. He has worked as a lecturer at The Courtauld and Birkbeck College.  He is currently Research Forum Postdoctoral Fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art and is completing a book on the representation of the Works of Mercy in Italian medieval art. His previous publications include an article in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes.

Caroline Brooke is an Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London. She specialises in Florentine and Venetian Renaissance art, and has published articles on Renaissance drawings. She is co-author of the Universal Leonardo project, a comprehensive guide to the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci, and was script advisor for Medici Godfathers of The Renaissance, broadcast on Channel 4.

Dr Sara Cochran is the curator of modern and contemporary art at the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona. In 2009, she organised the showing of the exhibition ‘Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement’ at the museum and curated ‘Locals Only’ – an exhibition of 12 Latino artists working in the Phoenix area. From 2004 – 2008, she was assistant curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and worked on four exhibitions – ‘Franz West, To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972-2008’ (2009); ‘Dali: Painting & Film’ (2007); ‘Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images’ (2006) and ‘David Hockney Portraits’ (2006). She received her Ph.D. from The Courtauld Institute of Art in 2005.

Dr Richard Cork is an art critic, award-winning author, historian, broadcaster and exhibition organiser. His books include ‘Vorticism’ (1976); ‘Art Beyond the Gallery’ (1985); ‘David Bomberg’ (1987); ‘A Bitter Truth: Avant-Garde Art and the Great War’ (1994); ‘Jacob Epstein’ (1999); and a four-volume collection of his critical writings on modern art, published in 2003 by Yale University Press, and Michael Craig-Martin (2006).  He has curated major exhibitions at Tate, the Hayward Gallery, Barbican Art Gallery, the Serpentine Gallery and elsewhere in Europe. Most recently, he curated the exhibition ‘Wild Thing – Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Eric Gill’ at the Royal Academy (October 2009-January 2010).  His new book ‘Mercy, Madness, Pestilence and Hope: A History of Western Art in Hospitals’ will be published by Yale University Press in the autumn of 2010.

Professor Paul Crossley completed his doctorate, on the history of Polish Medieval architecture, at Trinity College Cambridge and the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. From 1971 to 1990 he was a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in the History of Art at Manchester University. In 1990 he joined the teaching staff of The Courtauld Institute, first as a Senior Lecturer and then (from 2002) as a Professor. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a Foreign Fellow of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr Peter Dent is a Henry Moore Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Warwick; he was previously British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow and then Visiting Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art.  He specialises in Italian sculpture of the early Renaissance and is working on the relationship between sculpture and the senses in medieval Italy.

Dr Michael Douglas-Scott is an Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, and specialises in Italian painting and patronage. He has lectured extensively on the Italian Renaissance. He lived in Italy for many years and has published articles in ‘Arte Veneta’, ‘The Burlington Magazine’ and the ‘Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes’.

Dr Alexandra Gajewski studied for her doctorate (on Gothic architecture in northern Burgundy) at The Courtauld Institute of Art. Since then she has taught at various London universities and as Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has published on French and German art and architecture in the Middle Ages.

Dr Paula Henderson has an MA in art history from the University of Chicago and a PhD in architectural history from The Courtauld Institute of Art. Her book ‘The Tudor House and Garden: Architecture and Landscape in the sixteenth and early seventeenth Centuries’ (Yale University Press) won the Berger Prize for British Art History. She has published over 30 articles and essays and lectures widely in both the USA and Britain.

Dr Cecily Hennessy studied for her BA and MA in History of Art at the University of  Washington and went on to gain a PhD in Byzantine art at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2001. She has taught at universities in the USA and the UK and was Head of Short Courses and Adult Learning at The Courtauld Institute of Art before joining Christie’s Education as a lecturer in 2006. Her book ‘Images of Children in Byzantium’ was published in 2008.

Sarah Hyde studied English and Art History at Cambridge University and has an MA from The Courtauld Institute of Art. She was Curator of Prints at the Whitworth Art Gallery, and Curator of Prints and Drawings at The Courtauld Gallery, before becoming Head of Interpretation at Tate Britain in 2000. She has curated many print exhibitions on artists including Rembrandt, Hogarth, and areas such as late-nineteenth-century French lithographs. Her publications include Exhibiting Gender (1997), and she currently teaches on The Courtauld MA course ‘Curating the Art Museum’.

Dr Sarah James completed her PhD on German photography at The Courtauld Institute of Art in 2007. From 2008-2009 she was an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Berlin. During this fellowship she began working on the book based on her doctoral research, entitled ‘German Photography: The Demands of Realism & The Aesthetics of Objectivity’. Sarah is currently a departmental lecturer at the University of Oxford. She is a frequent contributor of feature essays and criticism on photography and contemporary art to Art Monthly, Frieze and Art Review and has also published articles and reviews in journals such as Art History, Photographies and The New Left Review.

Dr Lucy Jessop studied at the University of Reading, then at The Courtauld Institute of Art for her MA and PhD in British Architectural History. She specialises in the architectural patronage and building of town and country houses during the 17th and 18th centuries, and has taught many courses on post-medieval architectural history, especially of London, at The Courtauld, UCL, Birkbeck, Reading and City Universities. In her role as an Architectural Investigator with English Heritage, working in their York office, Lucy also contributes to courses on interpreting buildings for Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education.

Dr Elena Kashina studied for her MPhil in Mediaeval Viking and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Oslo, following an award of a scholarship by the Research Council of Norway and went on to gain her PhD in the History of Art at Leeds in 2007. She has presented her findings at international research forums, and is currently working on a series of articles based on her doctoral thesis. She has taught at Leeds, and lectured extensively on the history of Russian pictorial expression at the Centre for Lifelong Learning at York. She specialises in the history of artistic patronage in Russia and in the reinvention of devotional culture under Ivan IV the Terrible.

Dr Rose Kerr specialises in East Asian art and design.  She spent a year in China as a student during the Cultural Revolution, and visits Asia frequently for research.  Former Keeper of the V&A’s Far Eastern Department and President of the Oriental Ceramic Society, she is currently associated with the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge and the University of Glasgow, is Trustee of the Worcester Porcelain Museum and Chairman of the Great Britain-China Educational Trust.  Author of many books (the most recent in 2004 and 2009) she is currently writing two volumes on Chinese export porcelain.

Dr Jerzy J. Kierkuc-Bielinski studied at The Courtauld as an undergraduate and post-graduate student. He completed his doctoral thesis ‘Confinement and Illusions of Freedom: the Dialogue between Polish and American Conceptual Art 1970-1981’ in 2005. He subsequently worked on the British Museum 2008 exhibition and catalogue ‘The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock’. He is currently the Exhibitions curator at Sir John Soane’s Museum and his latest publications include the exhibition catalogue ‘George Scharf: From the Regency Street to the Modern Metropolis’ and the forthcoming ‘Sir John Soane: Installation and Identity in a Regency Collection’.

Dr Caroline Levitt is a visiting lecturer and associate scholar at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she recently completed her PhD on the relationship between Guillaume Apollinaire and André Breton. Specialising in modern French art and literature, her research interests include the relationships between poetry, cinema and sculpture, the work of Le Corbusier and the participation of artists in the decorative arts.

James McDonaugh has an MA in philosophy and theology from Oxford University, and an MA in architectural history from The Courtauld Institute of Art. His research and lecturing interests focus on Italy, Greece and Turkey. Since 2003 he has worked for numerous academic groups and touring companies, including: Art History Abroad, The Art Fund, The Courtauld Institute of Art and the museum organisation in the USA Historic New England. In 2008 he set up his own touring company – Art Tours Ltd - dedicated to taking groups on cultural tours all over Europe and beyond. He has a passion for southern Italy and regularly takes tours to Sicily, most recently in 2008 for The Art Fund . In 2009 he led a tour for the Art Fund entitled ‘Old Calabria’.

Dr Susie Nash is a Senior Lecturer at The Courtauld Institute of Art where she has taught for 15 years. She has published widely on painting, manuscript illumination, textiles and sculpture of the period, including most recently a book on André Beauneveu, a three part study on Claus Sluter’s ‘Well of Moses’ in ‘The Burlington Magazine’ (the final part of which came out in November 2008) and a wide-ranging overview of the period, ‘Northern Renaissance Art’ (2008) published by Oxford University Press. She is currently working on a book on the subject of Claus Sluter’s ‘Well of Moses’. Susie Nash was the founder, and for many years director, of the Courtauld Summer School.

Helena Pickup is an independent art historian and lecturer specialising in 17th and 18th- century French art, with a particular interest in the relationship between social and court history and the fine and decorative arts.  She has a BA in Modern History from the University of Oxford and an MA in Decorative Arts and Historic Interiors, taught jointly by the Wallace Collection and the University of Buckingham.  Until recently, Helena was Assistant Curator at Waddesdon Manor, where she has worked since 2001.

Dr Stephanie Porras is currently the Leibniz-Gemeinschaft Fellow at The Courtauld Institute of Art. She completed her PhD, entitled "The Peasant as Pagan in the Work of Pieter Bruegel the Elder" at The Courtauld Institute of Art under the supervision of Joseph Koerner. She has taught courses on Netherlandish and Dutch art at University College London and has worked at the J. Paul Getty Museum and British Library.

Clare Richardson is a paintings conservator whose research interests include Victorian painting techniques and pigment deterioration. She works in private practice undertaking the mobile infrared reflectography of paintings and other art objects from diverse historical periods. Her work as a paintings conservator has recently included a joint project to restore The Courtauld Gallery’s Moses and the Brazen Serpent by Rubens.

Dr Janet Robson is an Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London, where she teaches Italian art from the 13th to the 15th centuries. She has also taught at The Courtauld Institute of Art, Bristol University, and Christie’s Education. She has held research fellowships in Rome and Florence and has published widely, with articles in Art Bulletin, Apollo and the Burlington. Her major research project at present is a book on the Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi, co-authored with Dr Donal Cooper of Warwick University

Dr Eileen Rubery came to Art History after a career in Medicine and the Civil Service, having been first a cancer specialist and then head of the Health Protection Division in the Department of Health.   She completed her MA on Byzantine Art at The Courtauld Institute in 2002 and stayed on to study for a PhD on 'Papal Patronage in Byzantine Rome', which focuses on the church of S Maria Antiqua in the Roman Forum.  Eileen teaches widely, among other for the Continuing Education Departments at Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

Dr Joanna Selborne is Curator of Prints at The Courtauld Gallery. She previously held a research post at Central Saint Martins School of Art where she catalogued the collection of 20th century British wood engravings. Her PhD thesis was published as British Wood-Engraved Book Illustration 1904-1940: A Break with Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1998). Exhibitions curated at The Courtauld include Paths to Fame: Turner Watercolours from The Courtauld Gallery. As an amateur printmaker she specializes in relief printing.

Dr Julian Stair is a potter and writer. He has exhibited internationally over the last 28 years and has work in over twenty public collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, British Council, American Museum of Art & Design and the Boymans Museum, Netherlands. In 2002 he completed a PhD at the Royal College of Art researching the critical origins of English studio pottery and is a regular contributor to craft journals in the UK and USA.

Gail Turner is an art historian specialising in Spanish painting. She has an MA in History from Oxford, an MA from The Courtauld, and a Diploma in Fine Art. Gail teaches on the Cambridge University International Summer School  and lectures extensively on Spanish art and history for organisations including the Art Fund, the V&A, and NADFAS.  She lived in Spain for several years, lectures on art tours, and is currently writing a book on Spanish art and history.  Gail is also a painter.

Dr Matthias Vollmer is adjunct Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin European Studies Programme. He studied History of Art, Philosophy, and Orientalism at the Freie Universität Berlin and did his PhD on medieval book illustration. He has regularly taught interdisciplinary seminars on Renaissance art and thought as well as on modern art at the Freie Universität Berlin. He currently researches colour theories in medieval encyclopedias.

Dr Rose Walker studied Classics at Oxford, before working in arts and education. She obtained her PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art on Spanish illuminated manuscripts and the management of change. Her book ‘Views of Transition: Liturgy and Illumination in Medieval Spain’ was published by The British Library. In July 2008 she taught on a Curso de Verano in Jaca.  She is currently working on a project looking at art and architecture along and off the Roman roads of Iberia with funding from The British Academy.


Dr Christian Weikop has a PhD in Art History from the University of Birmingham, and lectures on modern and contemporary art at the University of Sussex. In 2005 Dr Weikop was awarded a Leverhulme Trust fellowship, and in the same year he organised an international Brücke centenary conference.  He has written extensively on the Brücke group of Expressionists, and more generally his research explores visual, literary and critical constructions of German identity from the Northern Renaissance to the present day.  He is currently engaged with research on German avant-garde magazines for the AHRC and OUP Modernist Magazines Project.

Dr Richard Williams was awarded his doctorate by The Courtauld Institute of Art and is Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London. He was a post-doctoral fellow at The Paul Mellon Centre (Yale University) and his publications focus on the visual arts in Northern Europe.

Dr Catherine Yvard is currently working at The Courtauld Institute of Art on the Gothic Ivories Project. Previously, she has worked on medieval and Renaissance manuscripts at the British Library, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. Her area of specialisation is late-medieval books of hours, with a particular interest in the transition from manuscript to printed book, and in the transmission of patterns through time and space.