We are delighted to invite you to the Courtauld Institute’s annual Postgraduate Symposium 2025/2026. Researchers in the final stages of their doctoral degrees will deliver papers emerging out of their research projects. In past years, the event has been a moment for faculty, students and the public to celebrate innovative research.
Organised by Alison Braybrooks and Smaranda Ciubotaru, PhD students at the Courtauld.
Schedule:
Day 1 – Thursday 30 Apr
16.00 – 16.30 | Registration opens
The Courtauld Institute, Vernon Square Campus
16.30 – 16.40 | Opening Remarks and introduction
Professor Klara Kemp-Welch, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History and Head of Research Degrees Programme.
Alison Braybrooks and Smaranda Ciubotaru, PhD students and symposium organisers
16.40 – 18.20 | Panel 1 – Medieval
‘Transience and Permanence: The Effigy of Wolfhard of Roth (d. 1302) and the Material Paradox of Death in Metal’
Isabella Maoz (Schwarzer)
‘With such colour and embroidery as shall be agreed upon by the entire fellowship’: The Parureboek and ceremonial dress in Bruges’ Confraternity of the Holy Blood’
Leylim Erenel
‘‘in order that their fervent devotion may be kindled and God in his creation glorified more often’: The Chantry Chapel of Henry V in Westminster Abbey’
Sophia Dumoulin
‘Keeping it short (Breviculum): A pre-history of the comic strips’
Ricardo Mandelbaum Balla
18.20 – 19.30 | Drinks Reception
Open to all
Day 2 – Friday 1 May
09.00 – 09.30 | Registration opens
The Courtauld Institute, Vernon Square Campus
09.30 – 09.40 | Opening Remarks and introduction
Alison Braybrooks and Smaranda Ciubotaru, PhD students and symposium organisers
09.40 – 11.00 | Panel 2 – Early Modern
‘Jacopo de’ Pazzi at the Florentine Badia’
Emma Iadanza
‘Building a ‘Compositional Kit’: Records, Copies, and Collaboration in Andrea Palladio’s workshop’
Alexis Nanavaty
‘Release the Angels: the use of stucco in immersive religious interiors in Rome around 1600’
Alison Braybrooks
11.00 – 11.20 | Refreshment Break
Tea and Coffee Provided
11.20 – 13.00 | Panel 3 – Technical Art History
‘Revisiting Varnish Removal: “Greener” Cleaning Methods for Aged Synthetic Varnishes on Acrylic Emulsion Paint Films’
Beatrice Menegaldo
‘From Materiality to Meaning: An investigation into the painting materials and techniques of Joan Miró during his artistic period in Mallorca (1956-1983)’
Mar Gomez
‘Unseen Disegno: The Use of Cartoons in Renaissance Venice’
Emma P. Holter
‘Interconnected Identities: Computational findings and their interpretation for sample paintings’
Tanya Klowden
13.00 – 13.40 | Lunch break
Provided for participants and organisers
13.40 – 15.20 | Panel 4 – 19th Century / Modernism
‘A Blackface Knight: The Arthurian Legends, Minstrelsy, and Trans-Atlantic Cultural Exchange, 1860 – 1918’
Zoe Mercer-Golden
‘The Geological Stripe: Ethel Mairet and the Landscape of Sussex’
Alice Dodds
‘The Architectonics of Spirit: Galka Scheyer’s Home-Gallery by Richard Neutra and Gregory Ain’
Rachel Denniston
‘Free Unions Locked Up: the paradox of resistance and the Special Branch confiscation of a British Surrealist Journal’
Christina Childs
15.20 – 15.40 | Refreshment Break
Tea and Coffee Provided
15.40 – 17.40 | Panel 5 – Post Modern/Contemporary
‘‘Le streghe son tornate’: Anti-institutional Feminists Reimagining Women in 1970s Italy’
Veronica Orlandi
‘To Each Their Own Subculture: Late Soviet Samizdat in the Practice of Serge Segay and Rea Nikonova’
Rada Georgieva
‘Zones of Conflict: Heresies’ Visual Strategy and Feminist Art on Violence’
Tatjana Schaefer
‘Maud Sulter’s Black Feminist Art Histories’
Zoe Bromberg-McCarthy
‘Playing with Fire: Exhibiting Șerbana Drăgoescu’s Matchstick Game Across the Iron Curtain’
Smaranda Ciubotaru
17.40 – 17.50 | Closing Remarks
Professor Klara Kemp-Welch, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History and Head of Research Degrees Programme.
17.50 – 19.00 | Drinks Reception
Open to all