My research explores the exchange and mobility of art objects in the early modern world. My latest book, Courtly Mediators: Transcultural Objects Between Renaissance Italy and the Islamic World (Cambridge University Press, 2023) investigates the exchange of objects-ceramics, metalwork, textiles, and aromatics-between Italian courts (Ferrara and Naples in particular) and the Mamluk and Ottoman courts in the fifteenth century. My other publications include Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court: Objects and Exchanges (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and European Art and the Wider World 1350-1550 (co-edited with Kathleen Christian, Manchester University Press, 2017). I was co-investigator (with Katherine Wilson) of an interdisciplinary research network examining the mobility of objects (MOB) across and beyond European boundaries during the period 1000-1700, funded by the AHRC, which resulted in an exhibition and an edited volume.
My research also engages with the sensorial experiences of early modern objects and I co-organise with Helen Coffey (Music, the Open University) an interdisciplinary annual conference on Early Modern Sensory Experiences (EMSE) at Kellogg College. I am also a co-convenor for Oxford's Early Modern Italian World seminar, and a co-convenor of the TORCH Digital Humanities and Sensory Heritage (DHSH) network, led by Emanuela Vai.
