Year Three PhD Symposium

We are delighted to invite you to The Courtauld’s annual Postgraduate Symposium 2024/2025. 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 Hannah Healey and Michelle Zhu, PhD students, The Courtauld. 

Year Three PhD Symposium

23 May 2025

Book now

23 May 2025

10:00 - 18:00

Free, booking essential

Vernon Square Campus, Lecture Theatre 2

This event takes place at our Vernon Square campus (WC1X 9EW).

Tags: 

Research

Schedule:

9.30 – 10.00: Registration opens
The Courtauld, Vernon Square Campus

10.00 – 10.10: Opening remarks, and introduction to the day
Professor Guido Rebecchini, Professor of Sixteenth-Century Southern European Art and Head of Research Degrees Programme, The Courtauld.
Hannah Healey and Xiaojue Michelle Zhu, PhD students and symposium organisers.

10:10 – 11:30 | Panel 1 – Political Imaginaries

‘Copyright Meets Reproductive Rights: Käthe Kollwitz and the Abortion Rights Movement in Weimar Germany’
Xiaojue Michelle Zhu 

‘Victory Vietnam: The Second Iteration of Artists for Democracy’
Hannah Healey

‘Imagining the Soviet: Visual Strategies Between Truth and Fiction’
Elena Konyushikhina

11.30 – 11.40: Refreshment Break
Tea and Coffee Provided

11:40 – 13:00 | Panel 2 – Marks and Materials

‘Measurement Relics, Exchequer Standards, and the “Promise of Sameness”’
Sophia Adams

‘On the Surface: Miniaturised Marks of Making and their Ontological Implications in 15th and 16th century Persian Painting’
Rachel Albans

‘Line, Flesh, and Page: The Literary Surfaces of Barbara Chase-Riboud’
Bella Kesoyan

13.00 – 14.00: Lunch break
Provided for participants and organisers

14:00 – 15:20 | Panel 3 – Cultural Exchange

‘“I put My Seal on This Paper” – The ‘Imago Impressa’ of Queen Helena’
Marija Shipley

‘From Isfahan to Moscow: The Significance of the Diamond Throne in the Russo-Iranian Transcultural Narrative’
Olga Gillen

‘The Man on the Fish: Water Deities of the Indus River from Khizr to Jhuley Lal’
Nada Raza

15.20 – 15.30: Refreshment Break
Tea and Coffee Provided

15:30 – 16:50 | Panel 4 – Spaces

‘“A brocade gown of hers and another garment of crimson satin”: Doña Juana de Mendoza’s donations to the Granada Venegas Chapel’
Natalia Muñoz-Rojas

‘“Know the World from End to End Is a Mirror”: Illuminating the Shrine of Imam Reza in Qajar Iran’
Reza Daftarian

‘The Looting of the Western Qing Tombs’
Ricarda Brosch

16.50 – 17.00: Closing Remarks
Professor Guido Rebecchini, Professor of Sixteenth-Century Southern European Art and Head of Research Degrees Programme, The Courtauld

17.00 – 18.00: Drinks Reception
Open to all

Citations