Courtauld Trans-Asias Faculty
Sussan Babaie
Sussan Babaie is a specialist of the arts and architecture of the early modern Safavid period, with topics on urbanism and empire studies, on sexuality and social habits of ‘seeing’, and on transcultural visuality and notions of exoticism. Her research and teaching maintain a strong commitment to transcultural methodologies and especially trans-Asian subjects.
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Peyvand Firouzeh
Peyvand Firouzeh is a trained architect and art historian specializing in medieval and early modern art and architecture from the Islamic world, with research interests in material cultures of Sufism, the interaction of image, space, and text, Indian Ocean studies, and the mobility of artistic and intellectual networks within and beyond the Persianate world. Dr Firouzeh joins the Courtauld as Research Fellow in January, 2025.
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Sujatha Meegama
Sujatha Meegama’s research interests focus broadly on trans-Asian encounters in the Indian Ocean, especially the medieval and early modern worlds. She takes a trans-national approach to teaching Buddhist art histories and Indian Ocean art histories at the undergraduate and post-graduate level through shared themes, mediums, and methodologies.
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Maria Mileeva
Maria Mileeva’s research centres around postcolonial and decolonial narratives of the Russo-Soviet imperial projects and Soviet multinationalism. Geographically, her teaching covers the far reaches of Soviet Russia geopolitical influence and ambitions, including Central Asia and the Caucasus, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
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Henning von Mirbach
Henning von Mirbach specializes in East Asian art history, especially the visual and pictorial cultures of early modern China in their social and global contexts.
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Austin Nevin
Austin Nevin’s interest is the conservation and study of wall paintings and polychromy. His research in China has involved multi-analytical approaches to the technical examination of paint and support layers from Tibetan wall paintings and excavated polychrome sculpture, as well as the digital restoration of Buddhist heritage.
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Devika Singh
Devika Singh specialises in curatorial practice in modern and contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on art in South Asia and the transnational history of modernism. She has curated exhibition in a diversity of contexts, ranging from India and Bangladesh to the UAE and the UK.
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Wenny Teo
Wenny Teo researches and teaches on Modern and Contemporary East and Southeast Asian art with a focus on China and transnational Sinophone cultures. Current research includes ‘infrastructural imaginaries’ in contemporary Chinese art, focusing on issues of ecology, technology and the Belt and Road.
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Stephen Whiteman
Stephen Whiteman’s research and teaching engage with visual and spatial cultures of China from a transcultural perspective. His work explores social constructions of space, including architecture, landscape, and maps, as sites of political and cultural authority and resistance. He also has a particular interest in digital methods in art history.
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Meredyth Winter
Meredyth Winter researches medieval Iran and its artisanal networks and craft technologies. Juxtaposing regional and trans-regional patterns of exchange, she takes a technical art history approach to analyse the methods of production linking portable goods and ornament across geographic boundaries.
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Lori Wong
Lori Wong’s research and practice centre on conservation histories outside the West, seeking to reframe existing power structures and practice to develop more equitable approaches to thinking about, engaging with, and preserving cultural heritage. Her work positions cultural heritage conservation within broader economic, political, sociocultural, and environmental contexts.
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Tom Young
Tom Young’s work centres on nineteenth-century art histories, with a particular focus on colonial South Asia. His current research explores the global history of lithography, a medium that significantly reshaped visual cultures across Asia.
