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
Programme Day One
16.00–16.30 Registration opens
16.30–16.40 Opening remarks and introduction
Alison Braybrooks, Smaranda Ciubotaru, PhD students and symposium organisers
16.40–18.20 Panel 1 – Text, Material Dialogue and Ritual
‘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 Comic Strips’
Ricardo Mandelbaum Balla
18.20–19.30 Drinks Reception
Open to all
Programme Day Two
9.00–9.30 Registration opens
9.30–9.40 Opening remarks and introduction
Alison Braybrooks, Smaranda Ciubotaru, PhD students and symposium organisers
9.40–11.20 Panel 2 – Under the Lens
‘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
‘Interconnected Identities: Applying Machine Learning Analysis to Small-Scale 16th c. Paintings’
Tanya Klowden
‘Unseen Disegno: The Use of Cartoons in Renaissance Venice’
Emma P. Holter
11.20 – 11.40 Refreshment Break
Tea and coffee provided
11.40 – 13.00 Panel 3 – Architectural Identities
‘Architectural Ambition: Jacopo de’ Pazzi at Santa Croce, Palazzo Pazzi, and 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 Spaces in Rome around 1600’
Alison Braybrooks
13.00–13.40 Lunch break
Provided for participants and organisers
13.40–15.00 Panel 4 – Subversive Collectives
‘Free Unions Locked Up: The Paradox of Resistance and the Special Branch Confiscation of a British Surrealist Journal’
Christina Childs
‘“Le streghe son tornate”: Anti-Institutional Feminists Reimagining Women in 1970s Italy’
Veronica Orlandi
‘Maud Sulter’s Early Years: From the Blackwomen’s Creativity Project to Passion,1982-1990’
Zoe Bromberg-McCarthy
15.00–16.20 Panel 5 – Nations, Peripheries and Localities
‘Third Cultures: Late Soviet Samizdat in the Practice of Serge Segay and Rea Nikonova’
Rada Georgieva
‘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
16.20–16.40 Refreshment Break
Tea and Coffee Provided
16.40–18.00 Panel 6 – Embodied Approaches
‘The Architectonics of Spirit: Galka Scheyer’s Home-Gallery by Richard Neutra and Gregory Ain, 1934-6’
Rachel Denniston
‘Resistant Skins: Material Agency in Feminist Painting’
Tatjana Schaefer
‘Playing with Matches: Exhibiting Șerbana Drăgoescu’s Intermedial Game Across the Iron Curtain’
Smaranda Ciubotaru
18.00–18.10 Closing Remarks
Klara Kemp-Welch, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History
and Head of Research Degrees Programme, The Courtauld
18.10–19.00 Drinks Reception
Open to all