BIO
Award-winning professional with over a decade of experience in ground-breaking Institutes of Advanced of study and interdisciplinary research groups in the US, Europe and the UK, delivering projects, publications and presentations of ideas and best practices at the intersection of culture, conflict and human rights, the arts, urban futures and civic thriving. An Applied Humanist educated in intellectual history, philosophy, the history of art and architecture and culture, with industry experience, I am particularly interested in tackling big questions and problems, forging new conceptual frameworks and working collaboratively to bridge divides, creating new approaches to the urgent challenges of our times in the service of the public good.
Since moving to London from the US in 2015, I have earned an Exceptional Talent endorsement by the British Academy in 2018 for the potential for world-leading research, become a Fellow Royal Society for Arts, a Member International Council of Museum professionals and an invited Affiliate of the Royal Society of British Architects. LinkedIn
EDUCATION
Ph.D., History of Art and Architecture, University of Virginia, highest honors, Jefferson Scholars’ Foundation Fellowship, Society of Fellows, multiple grants and awards
Ph.D. Program, Philosophy, Brown University, Andrew W Mellon Fellow in the Humanities; Dean’s Fellow
Harvard University, studies in Ancient Greek
University of Notre Dame, BA, Intellectual History, highest honors, Glenna Joyce Fellowship, Phi Beta Kappa
EMPLOYMENT and ACADEMIC AFFILIATIONS
Senior Consultant and Writer, Research and Evaluation article for The Gallery, Artichoke Trust, May-Sept 2023. Download here.
Project Advisor for winning bid and programme, On Tenterground, London Metropolitan University/Aldgate Connect/London Festival of Architecture, Dec-June 2023.
External Expert Assessor, Research Proposals, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland and The Israel Science Foundation, Feb-May 2023.
Advisor, Associate Curator, Venice Project Space, Fondazione Marta Czok, Feb 2023 - present.
Associate Lecturer, MA in Public Art and Performance, School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University, Sept 2022-present.
Senior Strategist, Research brief for undisclosed architectural firm for NEOM: The Line, Feb-April 2022.
Research Member, The Centre for Creative Arts, Cultures and Engagement, London Metropolitan University, Feb. 2021 - present.
Research Projects and Partnerships Manager, Research and Postgraduate Office, London Metropolitan University, Jan. 2021- present.
Director, Cultural Innovation and Strategic Partnerships, Center for Conscious Design, Nov. 2020- June 2021.
Senior Cultural Researcher and Writer, Associate, Futurecity, London, UK, Sept. 2020- April 2021.
Associate, Communications Strategist, Foster + Partners, London, UK, April 2019-Aug. 2020.
Associate Fellow and Lead Scholar (non-residential), Thriving Cities Lab, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture (IASC), Univ. of Virginia, 2017-present.
Cultural and Creative Consultant, 2018-2019.
Development of winning Tender for Soft power assets mapping and UK cities for the British Council and CoreCities UK, Tom Fleming Creative Consultancy, London, April 2019.
Consulting Researcher and Writer, Arts and Social Impact Report, Cultural Institute, King's College, London, Sept-Dec. 2018.
Consulting Researcher and Writer, Governance Models for Cultural Districts, for the Global Cultural Districts Network and UAL, April 2018.
Contributing Editor, Arts & Culture series: Women leading the Arts, TOAST Magazine online, Jan.-Sept. 2018.
Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London, 2017-18.
Associate Fellow, King’s Centre for Strategic Communications, King’s College, London, 2016-2018.
Associate Fellow, Research Groups On the Human Person/Technology/Thriving Cities, IASC, 2011-2017.
Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies on the Image, Free University, Berlin, Sept. 2016-Jan. 2017.
Invited scholar, planning workshop on Mellon Foundation grant Edge-Border-Conflict, The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, 7-8 June 2016.
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer/Mellon MA, Research Forum, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 2015-16.
Visiting Lecturer, Art History Department, Virginia Commonwealth University, Spring 2015.
Lead scholar/project director, Research brief on Beauty as an Endowment of Thriving Cities, Thriving Cities Project, IASC, Sept. 2013–Sept. 2014.
Co-editor, with Prof. Francesca Fiorani, 25 essays by scholars of the NEH Summer Institute - Leonardo da Vinci: Between Art and Science, online resource with bibliography, Sept. 2013–Feb. 2014.
Project coordinator for Humanities in Place: Academic Space in Theory and Practice, Institute for the Humanities and Global Cultures + School of Architecture, University of Virginia, Jan.-April 2013.
Program coordinator, NEH Summer Institute: Leonardo da Vinci: Between Art and Science, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz/Max Planck Institut, Florence, Italy and University of Virginia, 2011-12.
Visiting Lecturer, Art History Department, University of Virginia, Spring 2011 and Spring 2010.
Coordinator for international conference and web design, Cultural Crossings: China and beyond in the Medieval Period, University of Virginia, Sept. 2009-March 2010.
Curatorial assistant, co-curator and panel writer for News of the Colonies: Prints, Maps and Perceptions of the New World, University of Richmond Museums, Sept. 2006-May 2007.
SELECT RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Cities and the arts/built environment
Peer-reviewed article: ‘Placemaking, performance and infrastructures of belonging: the role of ritual healing and mass cultural gatherings in the wake of trauma,’ (with J.L. Scarso), in Trauma-informed Placemaking, C. Courage and A. McKeown, Eds. (Routledge, forthcoming Spring 2024).
Peer-reviewed article: ‘Can we design for culture? paradigms and provocations’, Built Environment, special issue Arts & the City (Summer issue 2020).
Peer-reviewed article: ‘Towards Beauty and a Civics of Place: Notes from the Thriving Cities Project’, (with J. Yates), in Creative Placemaking: Research, Theory and Practice, Cara Courage and Anita McKeown, eds. (Routledge, 2019).
Commissioned Research brief: Governance models for Cultural Districts (with J. Doeser), commissioned by the Global Cultural Districts Network (April 2018).
Peer-reviewed article: A.M. Kim (with T. Flores) ‘Overwriting the city: graffiti, crisis politics, and the image of Athens’ (with T. Flores) in Defence Strategic Communications, Journal of NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (Fall 2017).
Commissioned Research brief: ‘Beauty as an endowment of Thriving Cities’, A. M. Kim, editor and author, with L. Merrill, C. Miller, C. Yates, 2015, available online: http://thrivingcities.com/endowments/beautiful.
Image culture and conflict
Commissioned essay: ‘Re-enchantment and Iconoclasm in an Age of Images’, The Hedgehog Review, Critical Reflections on Contemporary Culture, Fall 2015.
Peer-reviewed article: ‘Creative Iconoclasms in Renaissance Italy,’ in Striking Images, iconoclasms past and present’, S. Boldrick, L. Brubaker and R. Clay, eds. (Farnham, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press, 2013).
Art criticism
Invited essay: Wall text to accompany Hamed Abdalla’s Lost or Escaped, for exhibition: Whose Tradition?, Tate Liverpool, March 2021.
Exhibition Review/Invited Editorial: Hamed Abdalla, The Mosaic Rooms, London, Frieze Magazine (online), May 2018.
Women leading the Arts and Architecture - Commissioned essays
Essay: A fragile generosity: autumn, art & architecture in Venice, TOAST Magazine/Arts & Culture (online), Sept. 2018.
Interview with Cara Courage, Head of Tate Exchange, TOAST Magazine/Arts & Culture (online), July 2018.
Exhibition review of Leonor Antunes + Rachel Whiteread, TOAST Magazine/Arts & Culture (online), Jan. 2018.
Invited Essay: ‘Liane Lang: Civic monuments and spectres of the past,’ Garageland: art, culture, ideas, Issue 21, Spring 2017.
SELECT PRESENTATIONS AND PANEL ORGANIZATION
Keynote speaker, Culture as a Human Right, for opening of Oslo World, Nobel Peace Center, 31 Oct. 2022
Keynote speaker, The vital role of culture in civic thriving: the soft power tools of culture, for opening panel on The impact of music in crisis and conflict, Creative Impact Conference, Tallinn Music Week, 6 May 2022.
Invited speaker, panel on The Future of Creative Space Ownership, Night Time Economy Summit, Bristol, UK, 8 April 2022.
Invited keynote speaker, How to Build a Cultural District, Golden Gate Forum, Kyiv, Ukraine, November 2021.
Invited presenter and panelist, Dezeen talk on Designing Equitable Spaces, 21 April 2021.
Q&A performingborders | Live, performative reading and conversation between Nobel Peace Prize photographer and artist Sim Chi Yin and curator Annie Jael Kwan from Something Human and Asia-Art-Activism, curated by Alessandra Cianetti, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, 19 March 2019.
Conference Paper, ‘Theorising the image and art for IR conflict studies: the iconic turn and political mediation’, War for Presence: Conflict and Identity at the Art History-IR Nexus, King’s College, 30 June 2018.
Organiser (with Art History/UCL) and presenter, Troubling monuments: making, breaking and re-making heritage and history, Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture, UCL, 15 May 2018.
Organiser and discussant, Landscapes of vulnerability: a conversation with Lola Frost (Leverhulme Fellow, King’s College) and Edmund Clark (award-winning photographer), Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL, 25 April 2018.
Public lecture, ‘Enchantment and iconoclasm in an age of images’, with Prof. Martin Holbraad (Anthropology) and Dr Hans Christian Hoenes (Warburg Institute), respondents, Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture, UCL, 20 Feb 2018.
Invited Keynote, ‘The Aesthetics of the Abdomen: art historical and philosophical reflections’, Annual Meeting, Royal College of Physicians, London, 2 Feb 2018.
Residential Seminar presentation, ‘Reforming the Renaissance: Idols and Iconoclasm in Early Modern Rome’, Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL, 19 Feb 2018.
Public presentation, ‘Cosmos <Affect> Polis’, Summative panel, Rosi Braidotti Seminars on the Post-human, Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL, 19 Nov. 2018.
Panelist, Screening of ‘White Helmets’ documentary, Refugee and Migration Unit, UCL, Dec. 2017.
Conference paper, ‘Reforming the image: idols and iconoclasm in Early Modern Europe’, Ikonoklasmus. Bilder verehren/ Bilder zerstören, workshop in conjunction with exhibition Renaissance and Reformation: German Art in the Age of Dürer and Cranach, Kulturforum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 11-12 May 2017.
Research presentation, ‘Michelangelo as iconoclast sculptor’, BildEvidenz research group, Freie Universität, Berlin, Dec. 2017.
Chair, panel for conference Dead or Alive! Tracing the Animation of Matter in Art and Visual Culture, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 10-11 November 2016.
Panelist, Museums and social responsibility in the wake of humanitarian crisis (in conjunction with exhibitions, Refuge/e and Disappearance at Sea), BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, April 2017.
Co-organiser and respondent, Traces of War: A Pre-Exhibition Symposium, Kings College, London, October 2016.
Chair: Politics over the Public: The Role of Museums, Courtauld Institute of Art, June 2016.
Conference paper: ‘Painting the Eternal: Mosaic and Stone in Early Modern Italy’, British School at Rome, Italy, May 17, 2016.
Chair: Panel on Art and Conflict, Beyond Borders at Blain|Southern Galleries, sponsored by UNICEF NextGen London, May 2016.
Invited Panelist: A Dialogue on Beauty, The Ford Foundation, New York, December 2016.
Co-organizer (with Robert Williams, Univ. of Santa Barbara, CA) and Chair: Rethinking the Rhetoric and Force of Images, Renaissance Society of America meeting, Boston, MA, March 2016.
Conference paper: IAS-HNS joint session, ‘Reforming the idol: Maerten van Heemskerck’s St. Luke and the Virgin (1545)’, Renaissance Society of America meeting, Boston, MA, March 2016.
Co-organizer (with Julian Stallabrass) and Presenter, Symposium on Art and Terrorism, The Sackler Research Forum, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, February, 2016.
Co-organizer (with Robert Williams), IAS sponsored session, Rethinking the Rhetoric and Force of Images, College Art Association meeting, Washington, DC, February 2016.
Conference paper: ‘Idols of art and of the mind: Michelangelo’s Rondanini pietà’, Renaissance Conference of Southern California meeting, The Huntington Library, CA, June 2015.
Invited presenter, roundtable on Beauty and Justice, Art of Change program, Ford Foundation, NYC, NY, Dec. 2015.
Fellows’ lecture: ‘The New (Old) Image Wars: Rethinking Image and Violence after Paris’, Fellows Symposium, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia, May 2015.
Invited lecture: ‘The New (Old) Image Wars: Rethinking Image and Violence after Paris,’ UC Santa Barbara, CA, April, 2015.
Invited lecture: ‘The New (Old) Image Wars: Rethinking Image and Violence after Paris’, The Hallie Ford Museum, Willamette University, OR, March 2015.
Conference paper: ‘Idols of Art and of the Mind: Sculptural and Spiritual Iconoclasm in Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pietà’, Mellon Research Forum Conference on Religion, Art and Conflict, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, Dec. 5-6, 2014.
Panel organizer, session titled Creative Destruction in Early Modern Europe, Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, New York 2014.
Research presentation: ‘Reformations of the Image’, Summer Institute of Advanced Study, sponsored by the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, July 2014.
Research presentation: ‘Beauty as an endowment of Thriving Cities’, Thriving Cities Conference, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at Virginia, June 2014.
Fellows’ lecture: ‘Iconoclasms past and present’, Jefferson Fellows and Faculty Fellows Program, Jefferson Scholars Foundation, April 9, 2014.
Invited lecture: ‘Real Space, Imagined Place: Reinventing Icon and Vision, from Byzantium to Rome’, Boardman Lecture and Symposium on Material Religions, Univ. of Pennsylvania, April 2014.
Research presentation: ‘Iconoclasms: exhibition at Tate Britain and research’, Research Forum, Courtauld Institute of Art, June 2014.
Invited lecture: ‘Sculpture, iconoclasm and re-formations of the spirit: phenomenological reflections on Michelangelo’s last pietà’, Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts, co-sponsored by Duke Divinity School and the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Culture, Nov. 2013.
Conference paper: ‘Somatic piety: devotion, descent and the vision of Gregory at Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome’, Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, San Diego, April 2013.
Organizer and presenter, Theorizing the Global, roundtable for an interdisciplinary conference ‘Future(s) of the University,’ Institute of the Humanities & Global Cultures, U. of Virginia, Nov 2012.
Respondent: ‘Iconoclasm in Pre-History? Breaking objects and landscapes’, meeting of AHRC research network, University of Notre Dame, September 2012.
Research presentation: ‘Image agency, iconoclasm and the aesthetics of contemplation,’ meeting of AHRC research network, Tate Modern, London, October 2011.
Panel organizer (with Fredrika Jacobs), session on Accessing the Holy through Body and in Image, Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Montreal, March 2011.
Conference paper: ‘Materiality and the Mediation of Spirit: The Christ Icon between Italy and Byzantium’, 37th Annual Cleveland Symposium of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, February 2011.
Conference paper: ‘The Dialectical Icon’, Interdisciplinary Forum on Icons and Iconoclasm, W.J.T. Mitchell, keynote speaker, Jefferson Scholars Foundation, University of Virginia, October 2010.
Conference paper: ‘Transforming Agency in the Italian Appropriation of a Byzantine Icon’, Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, California, March 2009.
Respondent and Chair, panel on Neoplatonism and the Arts: Controversy, Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, March 2008.
Public lecture: Introduction to exhibition, News of the Colonies: Prints, Maps and Perceptions of the New World, Camp Concert Hall, University of Richmond, January 2007.
Gallery talk: ‘Mapping the Marvelous’ and teacher seminars for News of the Colonies: Prints, Maps and Perceptions of the New World, University of Richmond Museums, Feb.- April 2007.
FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS
Fellowship, Center for Advanced Studies, Research group BildEvidenz. Geschichte und Ästhetik, Freie Universität, Berlin, Sept. 2016-January 2017
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 2015-16
Summer Fellowship, National Humanities Center (N.C., USA) & Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, 2013/2014
Jefferson Scholars’ Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, University of Virginia, 2013-14
Robert J. Huskey Travel Fellowships, University of Virginia, March 2014; March 2011; Feb. 2008
Society of Fellows’ Travel Fellowships, University of Virginia, April 2013; February 2011
U.S. Graduate Representative, 33rd Congress of the International Historians of Art, July 2012
Fellowship for Translating the Past, Paleography Institute at Palazzo Rucellai, Florence, June 2011
Philip Francis du Pont Fellowships, University of Virginia, 2007-8; 2010-11
Junior Fellow, Society of Fellows, University of Virginia, 2009-10
Dissertation Research Award, Society of Fellows, University of Virginia, 2009
Dietrich Award for Outstanding Service to University Museums, University of Richmond, 2007
Visiting Research Fellow, King’s College Cambridge, 1991 (declined)
Andrew Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities, five-year award to PhD program of choice, one of 100 awarded in the US, 1989-1994
Dean’s Fellowship in Philosophy, Brown University, 1989 (declined due to Mellon award)
Regional candidate, Rhodes’ Scholarship, Oxford University, 1989
Phi Beta Kappa Society, 1988
Glenna Joyce Scholarship, full four year scholarship to the University of Notre Dame, 1981-85.
RESEARCH NETWORKS AND GRANTS
Member, Refuge in a Moving World Research Network/UCL, 2017-
Associate Fellow, Art & Conflict Hub, Dept. of War Studies, King’s College London, 2016-
Associate Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia, 2011-
Kress Travel Grant to present at joint session of the Historians of Netherlandish Art and the Italian Art Society, Renaissance Society of America Meeting, Boston, April 2016.
Participant, Artistic Practices: visualizing the urban context, Sussan Babaie (Courtauld) and Shane McCausland (SOAS), Directors, December 2015-present.
Participant, Andrew W. Mellon Research Forum on Religion, Art and Conflict, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, Michael Carter, Director, June –December 2014.
Participant, interdisciplinary research group on The Human Person, Technology and the Self, Joseph Davis, Director, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, Univ. of Virginia, 2011-2013.
Research member, international interdisciplinary research network: Iconoclasms: practices of the past, interpretations of the present, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (U.K.), 2011-13, Leslie Brubaker and Richard Clay (University of Birmingham, U.K.), Directors. Members’ research contributed to a major exhibition, Art Under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm at Tate Britain, October 2013 – Jan. 2014.
Travel Grant to participate in Resources and techniques for the study of Renaissance and Early modern culture, Warburg Institute, London, May 2010.
Dissertation Research and Travel Grants, Lindner Center and the Robert Craine Fund, McIntire Department of Art, Univ. of Virginia, Summer 2008; May 2010; September 2011.
TEACHING (History of Art and Architecture)
The Courtauld Institute of Art
Assistant, From Dante to Michelangelo: Rhetoric, Representation and Identity in Italian Art and Literature, c. 1300-1550, Interdisciplinary Mellon M.A. course, Dr. Scott Nethersole and Mellon Visiting Professor, Dr. Frederica Pich, 2015-16.
Visiting Lecturer, Sculpture and the Body in Renaissance Italy, Self-designed BA3/Special options course for undergraduate degree candidates, Fall 2015.
Virginia Commonwealth University, Art History Department
Visiting Lecturer/Faculty Replacement, Renaissance Art and Architecture (1300-1600): Italy and beyond, Self-designed 300-level undergraduate lecture course, Spring 2015.
Visiting Lecturer/Faculty Replacement, High Renaissance and Mannerism: Italy and beyond. Self-designed 400-level undergraduate lecture course, Spring 2010.
University of Virginia, McIntire Department of Art
Guest lecturer on materiality, devotion and iconoclasm, The Materiality of Art, graduate seminar (Prof. Douglas Fordham) March 2014.
Guest lecturer, sessions on ‘Cognitive Science, Art and Emotions’ and ‘The Faculties of the Intellect, Renaissance Art and Science, Freshman University seminar (Prof. Fiorani), Jan. 2012.
Lecturer, Sacred Image East and West, self-designed 400-level undergraduate seminar, Spring 2011.
Teaching Assistant, Introductory Art History Survey II, undergraduate lecture course (Prof. Sarah Betzer, Instructor) Spring 2009.
T.A., On-site course, Renaissance Art and Architecture, undergraduate lecture course (F. Fiorani), Florence and Siena, Italy, January 2009.
T.A., On-site course, Renaissance Art and Architecture, undergraduate lecture course (F. Fiorani) Rome and Florence, Italy, January 2008.CONFERENCE PAPERS,
RECENT SERVICE
Jefferson Fellowship Review Committee (PhD awards), University of Virginia, 2018, 2020, 2023
Viva/Dissertation Review committee member (PhD), Department of Art History, UCL, August 2017
Volunteer, Syrian pop-up restaurant, London, April 2017
Volunteer, Beyond Borders campaign for UNICEF/Syrian relief, NextGen London, May 2016
Volunteer, documentary photographer and fundraiser, refugee camps in Lesvos and Eidomeni, Greece, February and March 2016
LANGUAGES (in order of proficiency)
Italian, Spanish, German (limited passive/reading), French (limited reading), Ancient Greek (with effort)
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
Royal Society of Arts, UK
International Council of Museums
REFERENCES upon request