Henning von Mirbach (Ph.D., UCSB) is an Associate Lecturer in the Art and Architecture of Early Modern China at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He specializes in East Asian art history, especially the visual and pictorial cultures of early modern China in their social and local contexts. Prior to joining the Courtauld, Henning was a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he taught courses on Chinese art history and a Visiting Lecturer at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica in Taipei. His current research project investigates how early Qing (1644–1911) painters employed landscapes in the production of locally situated communities through appealing to familial lineages and local culture. This project highlights the recuperative potential of landscape paintings—that is, their capacity to reconstitute social bonds in the aftermath of conquest and colonization. It examines desires, expressed through landscape paintings, to look inwards and root post-conquest identities in the past.
Education
- PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA (2022)
- MA in East Asian Art History, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London, and University of Manchester, UK (2014)
- JD in German Law, University of Potsdam, Germany (2010)
- MA in French Law, University of Paris X – Nanterre, France (2008)
- BA in French Law, University of Paris X – Nanterre, France (2007)
Publication
“The Jiaoshan Tripod and the Reconstitution of the Scholarly Community in Early Qing China,” co-authored with Yun-chen Lu, in Paolo Santangelo, ed., Ming Qing Studies 2022 (Rome: WriteUp Book, 2022), 99-137.
