Dr Tom Nickson

Reader in Medieval Art & Architecture

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 forthcoming display in the Courtauld Gallery’s Project Space.


Teaching

MA:

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:


Recent publications

Books and edited books

Essays and articles

Reviews



Citations