CORA CHALABY
Cora Chalaby is a PhD candidate in History of Art at University College London. Cora’s research explores American abstract painting by women during the 1960s and 1970s, focussing on the work of Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Howardena Pindell and Alma Thomas. Cora holds an MA in History of Art from The Courtauld Institute of Art (2020), graduating with a Distinction from Professor Jo Applins’ special option, The Sixties: Eccentric, Erotic, Psychotic. Prior to her time at The Courtauld, Cora studied for a BA in History of Art at the University of Cambridge (2018).
MATTEO CHIRUMBOLO
Matteo Chirumbolo is a PhD student at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London and a fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. His research focuses on the patronage of cardinals Girolamo Basso and Domenico della Rovere in fifteenth-century Italy. He has worked as a researcher for various London galleries and is co-editing a volume on the history of exhibitions (Artemide Edizioni, 2022).
ANDREW CUMMINGS
Andrew Cummings is a doctoral student working between The Courtauld and Tate’s Hyundai Research Centre: Transnational. Andrew’s PhD project examines queerness and globalisation, focusing on contemporary art from East and Southeast Asia. A chapter on queer apocalypses will be published in Imagining the Apocalypse (forthcoming, Courtauld Books Online).
EMIE DIAMOND
Emie Diamond is a writer and curator based in London. She recently graduated from The Courtauld Institute of Art with an MA in History of Art. Her special subject was Curating and Collecting the Modern, under the direction of Dr Natalia Murray. She received a prior Master’s degree from Harvard University where she analysed post-1980s contemporary art and culture. Diamond set up a curatorial platform where she has worked with nineteen emerging artists, including Chase Hall, Beau Rhee, Brendan Fernandes, Kristin McIver, Shantell Martin and Andrea Mary Marshall.
ELIZA GOODPASTURE
Eliza Goodpasture is a PhD candidate at the University of York. Her research explores the relationship between female friendship and art among women artists working in England between 1870 and 1920. She received her MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2019 and her BA from Bowdoin College in 2018.
MARIA HARVEY
Maria Harvey is Visiting Assistant Professor and Research Coordinator for the Madison Art Collection and Lisanby Museum (2021-2022) at James Madison University. Her research focuses on questions of identity, marginalised communities and visual languages in late medieval southern Italy. Maria read Art History at the University of Cambridge, before joining The Courtauld for the MA ‘Byzantium and its Rivals’. In 2014, she returned to Cambridge for a PhD; her thesis was on the church of Santa Caterina at Galatina, in the Salento. She has been awarded fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and at the British School at Rome.
CARLA KESSLER
Carla Kessler is a PhD candidate at The Courtauld Institute of Art, where she researches experiential art since the 1960s. Previously she worked in audience research and strategic planning for museums including the Art Institute of Chicago and The Museum of Modern Art.
RACHEL KUBRICK
Rachel Kubrick holds an MA in History of Art from The Courtauld Institute of Art (2021), specialising in contemporary art and photography under the supervision of Professor Julian Stallabrass. She received a Distinction for her dissertation focusing on Surrealist photographers Ré Soupault and Denise Bellon and their work on the red-light district in Tunis. She served on the editorial board of The Courtauldian and has written for Boston Hassle and Squinch, an undergraduate magazine which she co-founded. Rachel is currently based in London.
CAROLE NATAF
Carole Nataf completed the MA Special Option ‘Art, Object, Sense: Crossings in Anthropology and Art History – the case of Eighteenth-century France’ at the Courtauld Institute of Art under the supervision of Professor Katie Scott in 2019. She is now a PhD candidate, focusing on the interrelations between the natural sciences and the decorative arts in eighteenth-century France.
MARGARET SQUIRES
Margaret Squires is a PhD candidate at The Courtauld Institute of Art. Her dissertation, supervised by Professor Sussan Babaie, centres on carpets produced in Iran during the Safavid period (1502–1722). Prior to starting her PhD, Margaret worked as curatorial assistant for Art of the Islamic Worlds at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she contributed to several exhibitions of art from Iran. She holds an MA in art history from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a BA in Middle Eastern languages and literatures from the University of Virginia.
XIAOJUE MICHELLE ZHU
Xiaojue Michelle Zhu is currently completing the MA Special Option Experiencing Modernism: Utopia, Politics, and Times of Turmoil under Tom Wilkinson at The Courtauld Institute of Art. She previously completed her BA degree in History of Art and German Studies at Vanderbilt University.