Rachel Alban
Rachel Alban is a CHASE-funded doctoral candidate at The Courtauld, studying Persian painting and the arts of the book under Professor Sussan Babaie. Her thesis foregrounds the role of a miniaturised mode of painting that flourished in Persian literary manuscripts from the fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries. This research focuses on text-image relationships in illustrated manuscripts and the interpretative, material and experiential implications of size and scale. With a BA in English from Oxford University and a Research MA from York University on the Tudor portrait miniature, Rachel pursues interdisciplinary interests, including issues of framing, ornamentation, wonderment and detail.
Bianca Arthur-Hull
Bianca Arthur-Hull is a recent graduate of the MA History of Art at The Courtauld in Italian Renaissance studies. Her dissertation examined late quattrocento Florentine woodcuts published in books and the problems encountered when trying to attribute such prints to artists of the era. Her previous research at the University of Melbourne examined the reception of early modern art in Australia and preconceptions about value and workshop production. She has written for the University of Melbourne, various galleries in Australia, The Courtauld’s Painting Pairs programme, and is currently working on a research project uncovering lost women artists for Australian art foundation, Sheila.
Sarah Brokenborough
Sarah Brokenborough completed the MA History of Art special option ‘Circum-Atlantic Visual Culture, c.1770-1830’ at The Courtauld Institute of Art in 2024. She previously completed a MA in Latin American Studies at Georgetown University and a BA in Comparative Women’s Studies at Spelman College. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on material culture, modernity, empire, and African Diasporic identities in nineteenth-century Brazil, Latin America, and the Caribbean with gender as a lens of analysis
Alice M. Chambers
Alice M. Chambers is the Curatorial Assistant for American Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH). She earned a BA in English (Honors) and Art History from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. In 2024, she completed an MA in the History of Art at the Courtauld, special option ‘Circum-Atlantic Visual Culture ca 1770-1830’ led by Dr Esther Chadwick and Dr Kyle Leyden. Prior to her time at the Courtauld, she worked as an antiquarian print seller and as Collections Assistant for the MFAH’s Hirsch Library.
Grace Fannon
Grace Fannon is the Curatorial Assistant at the Chitra Collection, a private museum of historic teawares in London. In this position, she co-curated The Craft of Tea 1660-2024, a Chitra Collection exhibition in collaboration with the Goldsmiths’ Centre, and was an editor for the accompanying catalogue. In 2023, she graduated with Distinction from the Courtauld Institute of Art’s History of Art MA, and in 2022 graduated with a First Class Honours BA in Art History and English Literature from Trinity College Dublin. Her area of art historical interest is the material culture accompanying histories of imperialism and colonialism.
Rada Georgieva
Rada Georgieva is a PhD student at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, where she is working on her thesis titled ‘“Parallel Cultures”: Mail Art Magazines and Samizdat from the Eastern Bloc and Latin America, 1975-1995.’ Her research explores Cold War exchanges between Latin America and the Eastern Bloc, focusing on artists’ publications, book art, mail art, and visual poetry. Rada’s interests lie in the interplay between the visual and the linguistic, and the art of countercultures during the Cold War. She holds an MA in Art History and Russian from the University of St Andrews and an MSt in the History of Art and Visual Culture from the University of Oxford.
Rebecka Öhrström Kann
Rebecka Öhrström Kann is an art historian based in London. They completed their MA in Art History at The Courtauld Institute of Art in 2024, where they studied Dr. Klara Kemp-Welch’s special option, ‘Solidarity and Its Discontents: East European Art in Times of Crisis.’ Their areas of scholarly research include the materiality of memory, performance and media, and the fluidity of images. Kann has previously held the role of Curatorial and Exhibitions Assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, and worked as a McMullan Arts Leadership Intern in the Photography and Media Department at The Art Institute of Chicago in 2022-2023.
Joseph Rosalind-Hayat
Joseph Rosalind-Hayat is an emerging curator based in London. He holds a BA in History from Oxford and an MA in History of Art from The Courtauld. His research focuses on cross-cultural artistic exchange, modern European art, and exhibition practices. He plans to undertake doctoral study exploring how Japanese woodblock prints, including their aesthetic and cultural resonances, were informed by modern European art practices. Joseph is also exploring ways to support artists from minority backgrounds and creating a digital project that examines history through engaging and accessible formats.
Tatjana Schaefer
Tatjana Schaefer is a PhD student at The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, researching how feminist political agency was reflected in 1970s-1980s US-American painting practices. She worked for five years as an assistant curator in the Art of the Second Half of the 20th Century department at Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, Germany. Tatjana holds an MA from Goldsmiths, University of London, and most recently participated in the ‘Linking Art Worlds’ traveling research seminars, organized by the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Getty Foundation.