Staff in Art History, Curating and Visual Studies

Head of Department

Dr Camilla Smith

Dr Camilla Smith

Senior Lecturer
Head of Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies

I specialise in early twentieth-century German and Austrian culture and intellectual history. I gained my research council funded PhD from the University of Birmingham in December 2007 and was appointed lecturer at Birmingham in 2008, and Senior Lecturer in 2021. Before this, I spent several years in Germany teaching English. I was also a teaching assistant in the Art History Department at the ...


Dr Francesca Berry

Dr Francesca Berry

Senior Lecturer

My specialisms are: French art, design and visual culture 1850-1940; Edouard Vuillard, the Nabis and domesticity; the representation of the domestic interior across a range of modern visual media; feminist methodologies.

Dr Michaela Giebelhausen

Dr Michaela Giebelhausen

Assistant Professor of Art History and Curatorial Practice

My research interests sit in several areas: museum architecture and histories; exhibition histories; Victorian art; eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries art and architecture; history of photography.

My research has been supported by The Michael-Wills Scholarship Fund (University of Oxford), The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), The British Academy, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in ...

Dr Sophie Hatchwell

Dr Sophie Hatchwell

Associate Professor in History of Art

I am an historian of visual culture, and my research focuses on text-image relationship and the dissemination of art in Britain in the 20th century. My research has been supported by the Barnes-Graham Trust and Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

Dr David Hemsoll

Dr David Hemsoll

Reader in Architectural History and Theory

David Hemsoll is a specialist in Renaissance art and architecture, especially of Rome, Florence and Venice, and he has written extensively in this area. He also has a particular interest in architectural theory and the methodology of architectural design.

Dr Claire Jones

Dr Claire Jones

Senior Lecturer in History of Art

My specialisms are French and British sculpture and the decorative arts 1800-1900, with a particular interest in intersections between sculpture and the decorative arts, between art and industry, and in curating the decorative. 

Dr Elizabeth L'Estrange

Dr Elizabeth L'Estrange

Senior Lecturer in History of Art

My teaching and research focuses on the art and culture of the late medieval and early modern period, especially illuminated manuscripts and book culture, and French and Burgundian court art. Within these areas, I work specifically on women as subjects and consumers of visual cultures, text-image relations, and the querelle des femmes. My research addresses, for instance, questions of maternity, ...

Dr Kate Nichols

Dr Kate Nichols

Associate Professor in Art History

I am an art historian of Britain and the British Empire, focussing particularly on the Victorian period.

Dr Gregory Salter

Dr Gregory Salter

Associate Professor in History of Art

I am a specialist in British art after 1945. My research to date has focused on home and masculinity in this period, and I am currently researching a transnational history of art from Britain, 1957-88.

Dr Deniz Sözen

Dr Deniz Sözen

Lecturer in History of Art

Deniz Sözen specializes in contemporary art practices and decolonising theories in the context of globalisation and diasporic art. She is particularly interested in Black and non-hegemonic art histories, with particular focus on artistic strategies that destabilise fixed notions of belonging and identity in relation to cultural theories concerned with hybridity, creolisation, opacity, ...

Honorary staff