# Graduate Students
**Source**: https://haa.fas.harvard.edu/graduate-students
**Parent**: https://haa.fas.harvard.edu/undergraduate-program
## GRADUATE STUDENTS
### G1 expand\_more
[datehortua@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:datehortua@fas.harvard.edu)
Latin American and Caribbean
Diego Atehortúa studies the bridges of Latin American and Caribbean arts with Atlantic Africa from the early modern slave trade to the aftermath of slavery in the long nineteenth century. His research interests include the Atlantic and Pacific currents of...
[samirabose@g.harvard.edu](mailto:samirabose@g.harvard.edu)
South Asia Art, Modern (20th Century)
Samira Bose studies the production of archives and museum collections in late twentieth-century South Asia, with a particular focus on art historical and anthropological documentation by artists. Her interests stem from her work at Asia Art Archive in...
[### Christian Bumala](/people/christian-bumala)
[cbumala@g.harvard.edu](mailto:cbumala@g.harvard.edu)
Modern (20th Century)
Christian Bumala studies sound and its representation in modern art, with a particular focus on the human voice. Drawing from disability studies and transhistorical approaches, his research considers the affordances of speech and song as visual objects...
[yomifolaranmi@g.harvard.edu](mailto:yomifolaranmi@g.harvard.edu)
Photography
Yomi Folaranmi studies the politics (and poetics) of representation and relation across the Atlantic from the 1800s. His current research takes Afro-Brazilian religious and visual culture as a point of departure to explore the cultural and artistic...
[### Madeleine Giaconia](/people/madeleine-giaconia)
[mgiaconia@g.harvard.edu](mailto:mgiaconia@g.harvard.edu)
Modern (20th Century)
Madeleine Giaconia studies modernism and empire in the Soviet Union, with a particular interest in the role of visual culture in interactions between Ukraine and Uzbekistan in the early twentieth century. Her research also considers how the art of the...
[iankarp@g.harvard.edu](mailto:iankarp@g.harvard.edu)
Northern Renaissance
Ian studies images and objects at the intersection of faith, artistic practice, and intellectual culture in northern Europe during the long seventeenth century. Drawing upon prints, illustrated books, and representations of the natural world, Ian’s work...
[### Santiago Olábarri Oriol](/people/santiago-olabarri-oriol-0)
[solabarrioriol@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:solabarrioriol@fas.harvard.edu)
Early Modern Hispanic World
Santiago studies early modern art and visual culture in the Hispanic world with a dual focus on religious images—particularly as records and as agents in processes of conversion—and on the intersection of knowledge and art production in the sixteenth and...
[shireenshah@g.harvard.edu](mailto:shireenshah@g.harvard.edu)
Islamic
Shireen Shah is a PhD student in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. She studies the transregional material exchanges of the early Islamic caliphates, particularly at their Eastern borders. Her research...
[erikzou@g.harvard.edu](mailto:erikzou@g.harvard.edu)
Modern (18th and 19th Century)
Erik Zou studies the visual culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. He is particularly interested in networks that connected artistic, scientific, and commercial forms of knowledge, and how these collaborations contributed to the development...
### G2 expand\_more
[### Fernando Casamayor Molina](/people/fernando-casamayor-molina)
[fcasamayormolina@g.harvard.edu](mailto:fcasamayormolina@g.harvard.edu)
Islamic Architecture
Fernando Casamayor Molina studies the archaeological landscape of Iraq during the early Islamic period. His research explores how urbanism and architecture reflect broader questions of inequality, state formation, and social control. He earned his...
[cameronchacon@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:cameronchacon@fas.harvard.edu)
Ancient Greek
Cameron Chacon is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History of Art and Architecture focusing on ancient Greek material culture. They are particularly interested in visual humor and representations of women, satyrs, and Amazons on vases from the Archaic...
[adamchen@g.harvard.edu](mailto:adamchen@g.harvard.edu)
American Art
Adam Chen is a historian and curator of American art from approximately 1750 to 1850. Taking a global, intercultural approach, his research interests include the artist Benjamin West (1738 - 1820) and his Anglo-American contemporaries, Chinese export...
[jesschen@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:jesschen@fas.harvard.edu)
Modern Art
Jess Chen studies modern art with a focus on Central Asia. Her research engages with nomadic philosophies; concepts of nationhood and empire; relationships between material culture, tactility, and avant-garde practices; and histories of ornament. Before...
[### Daria Evdokimova](/people/daria-evdokimova)
Medieval
Daria studies material culture of the medieval period. She is primarily interested in artefacts, primarily but not exclusively medieval manuscripts, in which word and image remain deeply imbricated within one another. Her research focuses on objects that...
[### Emma Harutyunyan](/people/emma-harutyunyan)
[emma\_harutyunyan@g.harvard.edu](mailto:emma_harutyunyan@g.harvard.edu)
Early Modern (Armenian Art)
Emma Harutyunyan's professional focus is on early modern Armenian art, with a particular emphasis on Armenian religious textiles. She has a background in curation and cultural management. Her research centers on the intersection of trade networks...
[jiwon\_lee@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:jiwon_lee@fas.harvard.edu)
Early Modern
Jiwon Lee studies the interpenetrating relationship between art and science by focusing on early modern metal sculpture. Perceiving each work as a compound of form, material, and technology, she explores how traveling metal sculptures contributed to the...
[khushinansi@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:khushinansi@fas.harvard.edu)
Islamic Art
Khushi Nansi studies women’s spaces of disobedience in the pre-modern Islamic world. Through exchanges at board games, she investigates notions of the “unseen” in a thirteenth-century Iberian manuscript . Her interests are transhistorical, spanning from...
[### Tan Yi-Ern Samuel](/people/samuel-tan)
[samtan@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:samtan@fas.harvard.edu)
Japanese Art
Samuel Tan studies clothing and dressmaking in postwar Japan and the emergence of contemporary Japanese Fashion. Located in the development of drawing, cutting, and sewing technologies/techniques in such institutions as Bunka Fukusō Gakuin, Samuel’s work...
[### Irina Zhambaldorzhieva](/people/irina-zhambaldorzhieva)
[irina\_zhambaldorzhieva@g.harvard.edu](mailto:irina_zhambaldorzhieva@g.harvard.edu)
Buddhist Art
Irina Zhambaldorzhieva studies the history of Buddhist art, focusing on Esoteric (Tantric) iconography. She is particularly interested in the iconographic transformations that occurred as the Tantric teachings were transmitted from India and Nepal to...
### G3 expand\_more
[### Nicanor Albornoz](/people/nicanor%C2%A0-albornoz)
Architecture
Nicanor studies the history and theory of modern architecture. He is interested in the dissemination of French academic culture, particularly in Latin America, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His work focuses on object´s political agency...
[laurenehrmann@g.harvard.edu](mailto:laurenehrmann@g.harvard.edu)
Islamic Art
Lauren Ehrmann's research focuses on North African and Andalusian manuscripts. She is interested in depictions of urban space, travel, cross-cultural exchange, and the relationship between manuscripts and the body. Prior to attending Harvard, Lauren was...
East Asian
Icey Lin is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, focusing on Buddhist art and architecture in medieval Asia. Prior to joining Harvard, Icey studied Art History and East Asian Religion at Columbia...
[neeshamewada@g.harvard.edu](mailto:neeshamewada@g.harvard.edu)
Islamic / CMES
[nmichaud@g.harvard.edu](mailto:nmichaud@g.harvard.edu)
Early Modern (African Art)
Noah Michaud’s research centers around the real and virtual encounters between Italy, chiefly the Republic of Venice, and sub-Saharan Africa in the early modern era. He studies the visual, material, and expressive cultures that contour these encounters...
Ancient Greek
Anthony’s area of study revolves around the art, archaeology, and culture of ancient Greece during the eighth through fifth centuries BCE. His research primarily focuses on depictions of eroticism and images of daily life, with the aim of gaining deeper...
Northern Baroque
Byron studies visual culture between Europe and America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His research interests extend from the cultural centers of northern and central Europe to the Ibero-American world, focusing particularly on their entwined...
Japanese
Hiroki conducts research on two subjects in early modern Japanese paintings. One focuses on the stylistic changes in the work of Maruyama Ōkyo, active in eighteenth-century Kyoto, and the way in which they correspond to his relationships with different...
Modern (20th Century)
Luci Williams’ studies are animated by an interest in textiles: their design, production, and the lives of the people–and animals–that make them. She looks forward to exploring this in the context of Soviet Central Asia. A graduate of Oberlin College...
### G4 expand\_more
[nolanboomer@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:nolanboomer@fas.harvard.edu)
Architecture
Nolan studies the modern built environment, media, and cultural exchange across the Western Hemisphere. Their work looks at popular architecture through cultural studies and historical materialist lenses. They received a B.A. in English at Oberlin College...
[natashacoleman@g.harvard.edu](mailto:natashacoleman@g.harvard.edu)
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century
Natasha’s research focuses on the visual cultures that emerged via the explosion of direct contact between Western Europe and late imperial China from the early seventeenth century until the fall of the Manchu Qing Empire in 1911. Multidirectional and...
[jdevoy@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:jdevoy@fas.harvard.edu)
Byzantine
John DeVoy is a first-year PhD student interested in the peripheral regions of the Early Byzantine world and their representation of local heterodoxy versus imperial orthodoxy through miniatures, wall paintings, and icons. He is also interested in the...
[jhallmark@g.harvard.edu](mailto:jhallmark@g.harvard.edu)
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century
Jordan’s research investigates networks of cultural transmission between France and Italy—outside the institutional venues of art academies—that led to the development of an increasingly homogenized visual language of European aristocratic and princely...
[### Timothy Hampshire](/people/timothy-hampshire)
[thampshire@g.harvard.edu](mailto:thampshire@g.harvard.edu)
Late Antique and Medieval Art
Timothy Hampshire researches the visual culture of Western Europe in a time when “Rome” became an idea subject to allusion, interrogation, and revival. Much of his current work focuses on the fourth and fifth centuries, but he is broadly interested in...
[xueyangpeng@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:xueyangpeng@fas.harvard.edu)
Chinese Art
April studies Buddhist art and visual culture of medieval East Asia. She is particularly interested in art's role in the visualization of processes that concern the conceiving and sustaining of life beyond the physical body. Her past projects have focused...
[ashaikh@g.harvard.edu](mailto:ashaikh@g.harvard.edu)
Islamic
Ayesha U. Shaikh is a doctoral candidate of Islamic architecture and urbanism in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. Her research focuses on Indian Ocean maritime connectivity in relation to visual and architectural...
### G5 expand\_more
[### Sandro Capo Chichi](/people/sandro-capo-chichi)
[sandrocapochichi@g.harvard.edu](mailto:sandrocapochichi@g.harvard.edu)
Historical African Arts
Sandro Capo Chichi is a PhD candidate studying historical African arts with a focus on the Bight of Benin area in West Africa. He received his M.A. in Art History and Archaeology from the Université Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne in 2019. His dissertation...
[### Catarina Flaksman](/people/catarina-flaksman)
[catarinaflaksman@g.harvard.edu](mailto:catarinaflaksman@g.harvard.edu)
Modern Architecture
Catarina's research focuses on architecture, exhibitions, modernity, and national identity in the twentieth century. She is particularly interested in the production of modern architecture in Brazil and its transnational exchanges within the Americas...
[azizaizamova@g.harvard.edu](mailto:azizaizamova@g.harvard.edu)
Modern (Twentieth Century)
Aziza Izamova studies the history of the museums and the art of Soviet Central Asia. Her current interests include history of Central Asian art institutions, art production in Soviet Uzbekistan, and Russian ethnographic missions. Her B.A. thesis...
[kacperkoleda@g.harvard.edu](mailto:kacperkoleda@g.harvard.edu)
Modern (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century)
Kacper works on the notions of health and disease, and their manifestations in art, architecture and their respective discourses. He is particularly fascinated by the concept of monstrosity, which emerges in relation to those two terms. Previously, during...
[tmenders@g.harvard.edu](mailto:tmenders@g.harvard.edu)
Historical Japanese Arts
Trevor works broadly on the history of Japanese art from the medieval through modern periods. His dissertation investigates depictions of live performance at the turn of the 17th century, reaching across disciplines to bring together critical study of the...
[eboniepollock@g.harvard.edu](mailto:eboniepollock@g.harvard.edu)
Arts of African Diaspora (Twentieth Century)
Ebonie is interested in researching the cultural arts of the early-twentieth century African Diaspora, with particular emphasis on theories of the archive networks of intellectual and artistic collaboration among Black women. She is a Presidential Scholar...
[rselch@g.harvard.edu](mailto:rselch@g.harvard.edu)
Rebecca Selch is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. Her research concerns the production and reception of drawing and painting in Safavid Iran. Her dissertation, tentatively titled...
### G6 expand\_more
[### Raghunath Akarsh](/people/raghunath-akarsh)
[raghunathakarsh@g.harvard.edu](mailto:raghunathakarsh@g.harvard.edu)
South and Southeast Asian Art
Akarsh studies the trans-regional interactions of Buddhist material culture across the Indian Ocean with a focus on locating Tamiḻakam in the South-Southeast Asian cultural encounters of Southern Buddhism. Akarsh holds a BA in History from University of...
[wakef@g.harvard.edu](mailto:wakef@g.harvard.edu)
Islamic Art & Architecture
After studying Islamic art and architecture at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Walid was appointed as teaching assistant in the Department of Archaeology at the same university, an office that he maintained until 2016. His interest in Andalusi studies led...
[### Alexandra Dennett](/people/alexandra-dennett)
[adennett@g.harvard.edu](mailto:adennett@g.harvard.edu)
Modern Art
Alexandra Dennett studies modern art and the history of photography. Her dissertation examines how photographs both represent and misrepresent the transformations of modern Central Asia from 1890–1940, a period animated by successive waves of imperialism...
[rhirsch@g.harvard.edu](mailto:rhirsch@g.harvard.edu)
Rachel Hirsch studies the cultural history of early modern South Asia. Her research is geared towards understanding the construction of cities and gardens, theorizing urbanism and territoriality, and experimenting with new research methods. Rachel has...
[elenajanney@g.harvard.edu](mailto:elenajanney@g.harvard.edu)
Early Modern
Elena Janney works on the visual culture of the early modern Age of Encounter, with a particular focus on European expeditionary art of the late-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. She is interested in the transmission of artistic practices and materials...
[tmitsuji@g.harvard.edu](mailto:tmitsuji@g.harvard.edu)
Modern / 18th and 19th century
Tai Mitsuji is a writer and curator who is interested in disrupting the thematic and temporal modularity of art history. Rather than being pinned to a single era, his work seeks to track ideas across both time and culture – drawing a line, for instance...
[### Nora Rosengarten](/people/nora-rosengarten)
[nrosengarten@g.harvard.edu](mailto:nrosengarten@g.harvard.edu)
Printmaking, 19th and 20th C American/European art
Nora Rosengarten (she/her) studies the history of printmaking from the 19th C to the present in Europe and the Americas. Her scholarship is animated by methodologies of materiality and process, as well as queer and feminist theories of knowledge, affect...
[racheltang@g.harvard.edu](mailto:racheltang@g.harvard.edu)
Rachel M. Tang studies the history and theory of socially engaged art practices, with a particular interest in artists who touch upon issues of pedagogy and ecology. Before coming to Harvard, Rachel received her B.A. in Art History from the University of...
[### Gabriella Wellons](/people/gabriella-wellons)
[gwellons@g.harvard.edu](mailto:gwellons@g.harvard.edu)
Pre-Hispanic Latin America
Gabriella Wellons’ research examines the visual and material cultures of Pre-Hispanic Latin America with a particular interest in polychrome mural painting and relief sculpture of ancient Peru. Her early fieldwork examined Moche graffiti imagery incised...
[### Joseph Mizhakii Zordan](/people/joseph-zordan)
[jzordan@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:jzordan@fas.harvard.edu)
American and Indigenous North American Art
Joseph Mizhakiiyaasige Zordan is a doctoral candidate in the History of Art and Architecture department at Harvard University. His work examines the ways architecture, decorative arts, and painting have been used by various communities in the American...
### G7 expand\_more
[### Victoria Andrews](/people/victoria-andrews)
[vandrews@g.harvard.edu](mailto:vandrews@g.harvard.edu)
South Asian Art
Victoria just completed her MA at the University of Chicago Divinity School studying the religious history of South Asia. During her masters studies, she was primarily interested in the incorporation of visual materials and art objects in consecration and...
[reburke@g.harvard.edu](mailto:reburke@g.harvard.edu)
American
Rachel Burke is a PhD student studying American art and visual culture, with a focus on representational legacies inherited from the 18 thand 19 thcenturies. During her time at the Williams College/ Clark Art Institute Graduate Program in the History of...
[amychang@g.harvard.edu](mailto:amychang@g.harvard.edu)
Spanish
[aime\_cichero@g.harvard.edu](mailto:aime_cichero@g.harvard.edu)
Latin American
Aimé Cichero received her BA in Art History from Brown University in 2017. She specializes in Pre-Columbian Andean art, with a particular interest in Moche material culture. Her research concerns include materiality, agency, the relationship of art with...
[### Kéla Briana Jackson](/people/k%C3%A9la-briana-jackson)
[kelajackson@g.harvard.edu](mailto:kelajackson@g.harvard.edu)
Art of the African Diaspora
Kéla Briana Jackson is a PhD student studying art of the African Diaspora. Her research interests include the history of photography, curatorial methodology, memory and archives. Kéla was a member of the inaugural cohort of Spelman College Curatorial...
[sarahlund@g.harvard.edu](mailto:sarahlund@g.harvard.edu)
18th-19th Century
Sarah Lund researches the visual culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, with a focus on female artists and works on paper. Her dissertation in progress is titled “Matrices: Female Printmakers in Revolutionary France" and focuses on female...
[smolina@g.harvard.edu](mailto:smolina@g.harvard.edu)
Islamic Art
Sarah Molina graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a BA in art history and a minor in philosophy, politics, and economics. She is interested in late medieval and early modern Islamic art objects, theories of ornament, and the...
[### Alejandro Nodarse](/people/alejandro-nodarse)
[anodarse@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:anodarse@fas.harvard.edu)
Early Modern
Alejandro Nodarse received his B.A. and M.A. in the History of Art from Yale University (2019). His research spans the early-modern period, with a focus on seventeenth-century painting in Italy and Spain. His Master’s thesis, “Measuring Martyrdom: Ribera...
[michael\_norton@g.harvard.edu](mailto:michael_norton@g.harvard.edu)
Chinese Art
Michael graduated from Tsinghua University in spring 2019, receiving his MA in art history and theory with a focus on Chinese Buddhist art and archaeology. His current research addresses a group of multi-tiered, modular Northern Dynasties sculptural...
[vaishnavipatil@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:vaishnavipatil@fas.harvard.edu)
South Asian Art
Vaishnavi Patil specializes in the art of South and Southeast Asia and completed her PhD in the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University in 2025. Her dissertation, “Between Power and Protection: Maternal Imagery in the Religious Art of South...
[### Sarah C Rosenthal](/people/sarah-c-rosenthal)
[scr875@g.harvard.edu](mailto:scr875@g.harvard.edu)
Northern Renaissance
Sarah C. Rosenthal is a PhD Candidate in History of Art and Architecture with a focus on Northern Renaissance and other early modern Art. She is currently writing a dissertation on the life and art of Swiss artist and mercenary soldier Urs Graf (c. 1485-c...
[mariasalvador@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:mariasalvador@fas.harvard.edu)
Japanese Art
María Salvador completed her BA in History of Art at the Universidad de Granada in 2012, which included an exchange at UC Berkeley. Her interest in Japanese religious art led her to complete an MA in Japanese Studies at SOAS, University of London in 2013...
[jiseo@g.harvard.edu](mailto:jiseo@g.harvard.edu)
Latin American Art
Mary’s research is focused on the visual and material traditions of the ancient Americas, particularly those seen in the Lambayeque Valley on the North Coast of Peru. She is interested in the intermediality between pictorial and textual systems of...
### G8 expand\_more
[tacar@g.harvard.edu](mailto:tacar@g.harvard.edu)
HAA/CMES
Tugrul is a PhD candidate in Harvard University’s joint program in the Middle Eastern Studies and History of Art and Architecture since 2018. His work focuses on Islamic art and architecture during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. His dissertation...
[dcrowley@g.harvard.edu](mailto:dcrowley@g.harvard.edu)
18th-19th Century
[kaila\_howell@g.harvard.edu](mailto:kaila_howell@g.harvard.edu)
18th-19th Century
Kaila Howell works on the history and theory of art from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, with particular interest in the intersections between art and philosophy during the early Romantic period. Her dissertation is a study of Philipp Otto Runge...
[sarahmallory@g.harvard.edu](mailto:sarahmallory@g.harvard.edu)
Northern Renaissance
Sarah’s research focuses on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art, particularly works on paper, paintings, and design. She is interested in the notion of the Global Baroque as it relates to Dutch Golden Age art, especially the emergence...
[juliasilverman@g.harvard.edu](mailto:juliasilverman@g.harvard.edu)
American art & material culture
Julia is a PhD candidate studying 19th and 20th century art and material culture, with a particular focus on design's role in the spread and contestation of American colonialism. With interests ranging from art historical methodologies to craft revivals...
[yuexie@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:yuexie@fas.harvard.edu)
Islamic Art & Architecture
Yue Xie received her B.A. in History of Art and Fine Arts from Bryn Mawr College. In 2015 she studied Arabic language and Islamic art at the American University in Cairo. She received her M.A. in the Art History and Archaeology of the Islamic Middle East...
### G9+ expand\_more
[### Annick Benavides](/people/annick-benavides)
[abenavides@g.harvard.edu](mailto:abenavides@g.harvard.edu)
Latin American
person
[### Mathilde Bonvalot](/people/mathilde-bonvalot)
[mbonvalot@g.harvard.edu](mailto:mbonvalot@g.harvard.edu)
Southern Renaissance
person
[### Fabienne Helfenberger](/people/fabienne-helfenberger)
[fabihelfenberger@fas.harvard.edu](mailto:fabihelfenberger@fas.harvard.edu)
Japanese
[ozakay@g.harvard.edu](mailto:ozakay@g.harvard.edu)
[### Chassidy Winestock](/people/chassidy-winestock)
[cwinestock@g.harvard.edu](mailto:cwinestock@g.harvard.edu)
Contemporary
Chassidy A. Winestock is a historian of modern, contemporary, and American art and is currently completing her PhD in the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. Her dissertation centers on the work in the 1960s and 1970s of...