Office hours: Monday, 1.30-2.30pm. Please sign up for a slot here
My research and teaching fall broadly into two categories: Gothic art and architecture across Europe, and encounters between Christian, Islamic and Jewish traditions, especially in medieval Iberia. Many of these issues were addressed in my first book, Toledo Cathedral: Building Histories in Medieval Castile (2015), and I am now working on a new book, Architecture in Medieval Spain & Portugal: Seven Moments, which will explore architecture across the Iberian Peninsula (including Spain, Portugal and al-Andalus) from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. I am also interested in questions of architecture and light, and in technologies of reproduction in the 19th century – the focus of a display in the Courtauld Gallery’s Project Space.
Teaching
MA:
- ‘Medieval Art and Architecture, 1066-1603: England and Beyond‘. Taught in 2024/25.
- ‘Arts of Intimacy? Christians, Muslims and Jews in Medieval Spain’. Next taught in 2025/26
- ‘Gothic Encounters: Architecture and Emulation in the Middle Ages’. Last taught in 2014/15.
BA:
- ‘Power and Piety: Medieval Westminster’ (BA1)
- ‘Facsimile Debates: AI to Plato’ (BA2)
- ‘Art & Identities in Medieval Spain’ (BA3)
PhD Supervision
I welcome applications from prospective PhD students and advise you to contact me as early as possible in the application process (ideally before December, to begin the following October)
Current
- Jamie Haskell, ‘The cloister of Pamplona Cathedral’ (due September 2022). Funded by CEEH.
- Jane Stewart, ‘The monument to Sir James Hales (d. 1589) in Canterbury Cathedral’ (due September 2024).
- Natalia Muñoz Rojas, ‘Women, new churches, and the conquest of Granada’ (due September 2025). Funded by CHASE
- Sophia Dumoulin, ‘Westminster Abbey After the Plantagenets: Worship, Power, Destruction & Transformation, 1399-1603’
- Ricardo Mandelbaum, ‘Ramon Lull’s Visual Culture: Intersections between Art, Architecture and Lullism in Catalonia, Paris, Montpellier and Mallorca in the late 13th and 14th centuries’
Completed
- Costanza Beltrami, ‘Juan Guas and Gothic Architecture in Late Medieval Spain: Collaborations, Networks, Geographies’ (2020)
- Maeve O’Donnell-Morales, ‘The Altar in Medieval Castile: a Social and Material History’ (2018)
- Sophie Dentzer, ‘Decorative Vaults in Fourteenth-Century England’ (2016)
- Matilde Grimaldi, ‘The Lost Romanesque Cathedral of Tortosa (Catalonia)’ (2016)
Research interests
- The spread of Gothic architecture in medieval Europe and technologies of architectural transmission.
- Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, especially Iberia and England.
- 19th– and 20th-century architectural criticism and revivalism.
- The cult of Thomas Becket.
- Church furnishings and inventories.
- Epigraphy and orality in Christian and Islamic contexts.
- The reception of Islamic art and architecture in medieval Europe.
- Architecture and light.
- Antiquarianism in Early Modern Spain and England.
- Photography, plaster casts, and technologies of reproduction in the 19th century.
Lecture recordings:
- Towers, Travel, and Architectural Habits
- Cities and Surveillance in Spain and Beyond, 1200-1500
- Why climb towers?
- Inventing Vaults: Salamanca, France, and al-Andalus
- (Im)material Devotions? Light and lighting in devotional practices
- Light and the Cult of St Thomas Becket
- Metamorphosis: Britain and the World in the Middle Ages
- The Courtauld Library: Antiquarian books
- The Courtauld Library: Fictile ivories
- The Courtauld Gallery: A Valencian lustreware dish
Recent publications
Books and edited books
- Gothic Architecture in Spain: Invention and Imitation, eds T. Nickson and N. Jennings, Courtauld Books Online, 2020.
- The Cult of St Thomas Becket: Art. Relics and Liturgy in Britain and Europe, ed. T. Nickson. Special issue of the Journal of the British Archaeological Association (2020)
- Toledo Cathedral: Building Histories in Medieval Castile. Penn State University Press, 2015.
- ‘Simulacra and Seriality: Spanish Renaissance Sculpture‘. Special issue of the Hispanic Research Journal, eds T. Nickson, M. Trusted and J. Schrader, 16: 5 (October 2015).
- Picturing Kingship in Medieval Castile, eds T. Nickson and K. Donahue-Wallace. Special 2012 issue of the Hispanic Research Journal, with papers from a conference organised in York in July 2011.
Essays and articles
- ‘The Names of God: Art, Power, and Ritual in Medieval Córdoba’, in Art, Power, and Resistance in the Middle Ages, ed. P. A. Patton Penn State University Press, 2024.
- ‘Towers, Travel, and Architectural Habits‘, in The Routledge Companion to the Global Renaissance, eds S. Campbell and S. Porras, Routledge, 2024.
- ‘Fernando III and Gothic Architecture‘, in El mundo de las catedrales: Pasado, presente y futuro. Actas del Congreso Internacional VIII Centenario Catedral de Burgos, ed. Carlos Izquierdo Yusta et al, 2022, pp. 653-661
- ‘The Parish Church Illuminated’, in Towards an Art History of the Parish Church, 1200-1399, ed. M. Bernstein, Courtauld Books Online, 2021.
- ‘Alfonso X’s patronage of Gothic Architecture‘, in Revista de Poetica Medieval, 2021
- ‘Describing Architecture in Thirteenth-Century Spain’, in Tributes to Paul Binski. Medieval Gothic: Art, Architecture & Ideas, ed. J. Luxford, 2021
- Foreword to The Cult of St Thomas Becket: Art. Relics and Liturgy in Britain and Europe, ed. T. Nickson. Special issue of the Journal of the British Archaeological Association (2020)
- ‘Light, Canterbury, and the Cult of St Thomas’, in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 173 (2020), 78-99.
- ‘Gothic Architecture in Spain: Invention and Imitation’, introductory essay in Gothic Architecture in Spain: Invention and Imitation, eds T. Nickson and N. Jennings, Courtauld Books Online, 2020.
- ‘Size and Surveillance in Conquest Spain: The View from the Tower’, in Beauty and Persuasion in Medieval Art (special issue of Codex Aquilarensis, 35, 2019), 139-156.
- ‘Art of Medieval Iberia’, Oxford Bibliographies Online (2019).
- (with Almudena Cros), ‘Constructing Pardon in Medieval Toledo’. Medieval Studies in Honour of Peter Linehan, eds F. Hernández, R. Sánchez Ameijeiras and E. Falque (2018), 493-522.
- ‘The Sound of Conversion in Medieval Iberia’. Resounding Images: Medieval Intersections of Art, Music, and Sound, eds S. Boynton and D. Reilly (2015), 91-107.
- ‘Remembering Fernando. Multi-lingual inscriptions in medieval Iberia’. Viewing Inscriptions in the Late Antique and Medieval World, ed. A. Eastmond (2015), 170-186.
- ‘Sovereignty Belongs to God: Text, Ornament and Magic in Christian and Islamic Seville‘, Art History 38: 5 (2015), 838-61.
- ‘Texts and Talismans in Medieval Castile’. Art in Translation 7: 1 (2015): 9-38
- ‘Copying Córdoba? Toledo and Beyond‘. The Medieval History Journal 15, no. 2 (2012): 319–354.
- ‘The First Murder: Picturing Polemic c. 1391‘. The Hebrew Bible in the Fifteenth Century: Exegesis, Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts, eds J. Decter and A. Prats (2012): 41–60.
- ‘Reframing the Bible: Genesis and Exodus on Toledo Cathedral’s Fourteenth-Century Choir Screen’. In Gesta 50, no. 1 (2011): 71–89.
- ‘Art and Belief in Medieval Castile’. Spiritual Temporalities in Late-Medieval Europe, ed. M. Foster (2010): 99–126.
- ‘La Catedral: su Historia Constructiva’. La Catedral Primada de Toledo, ed. R. Gonzálvez (2010): 148–161.
- ‘The Locked-Up Garden. Art and Nature in Medieval Castile’. Immediations 2, no. 2 (2009): 19–29.
- ‘The Royal Tombs of Santes Creus: Negotiating the Royal Image in Medieval Iberia‘. Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 72, no. 1 (2009): 1–14.
- ‘Moral Edification at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge‘. Architectural History 48 (2005): 49–68
Reviews
- Jonathan Bloom, Architecture of the Islamic West: North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, 700-1800, in Hispanic Research Journal, 2022
- Emanuele Lugli, The Making of Measure and the Promise of Sameness, in West 86th, 2022
- Philippe Cordez, Treasure, Memory, Nature: Church Objects in the Middle Ages, in Burlington Magazine, 2022
- Maile. S. Hutterer, Framing the Church: The Social and Artistic Power of Buttresses in French Gothic Architecture, in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2021
- Thomas Becket: Murder and the Making of a Saint, British Museum, in Arts (2021)
- Rose Walker, Art in Spain and Portugal from the Romans to the Early Middle Ages. Routes and Myths, in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 170, 2017, pp. 210-212.
- Paul Binski, Gothic Wonder: Art, Artifice and the Decorated Style, 1290-1350, in Art History, 39: 1, 2016, pp. 152-155.
- Jacqueline Jung, The Gothic Choir Screen, in The Medieval Journal, 14.1, 2014, pp. 139-141.
- Pamela Patton, Art of Estrangement. Redefining Jews in Conquest Spain, in Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, 8.1, 2013.
- Christabel Watson, The Romanesque Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela: A Reassessment, in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 163, 2010, pp. 182-185.