SOAS University of London

Department of the History of Art and Archaeology, School of Arts

Departmental Staff

Head of the School of Arts

Professor Shane McCausland

Director of Learning and Teaching

Dr Charlotte Horlyck

Research Coordinator

Professor Scott Redford

Dr Crispin Branfoot
Reader in the History of South Asian Art & Archaeology
Crispin Branfoot
Architecture, sculpture and painting in South Asia, especially in southern India; pilgrimage and sacred geography; material religion; colonialism and material culture.
Dr Pedith Chan
Senior Lecturer in Asian Arts and Cultures
Pedith Chan

Modern and contemporary art; social history; art and global modernism; history of Chinese art and visual culture; travel culture and landscape aesthetic; transnational contacts between China, East Asia and Europe.

  • Email: pc65@soas.ac.uk
  • Academic Support Hours: Term 1: Fridays 11-1; Term 2: Mondays 11-1
Professor Anna Contadini
Professor of the History of Islamic Art
Anna Contadini
Arab and early Persian painting and the arts of the Islamic book in general, including the production of manuscripts of the Qur'an; art and material culture of the Islamic world; Fatimid art and architecture; the arts of Islamic Spain; artistic contacts between the Islamic World and Europe; aspects of contemporary Islamic art.
  • Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4458
  • Email: ac24@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B306
  • Academic Support Hours: On leave in term 1
Dr Heather Elgood, MBE
Course Director of the Diploma in Asian Art
Hettie Elgood
Dr Heather Elgood is the Course Director of the Diploma in Asian Art. She is a specialist in Persian, Jain, Sultanate and Mughal manuscript painting as well as the ritual arts of Hinduism.
  • Tel: 020 7898 4445
  • Email: he2@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B310
  • Academic Support Hours: By email appointment
Dr Charlotte Horlyck
Senior Lecturer in the History of Korean Art
Charlotte Horlyck

Visual and material culture of the Korean peninsula; Pre-modern Korean burial practices, particularly of the Koryŏ period (AD918-1392); Arts of the Koryŏ period, especially bronze mirrors and ceramics; 20th century  collecting of Korean artefacts; Heritage and museum practices; Gender and material culture.

  • Tel: 020 7898 4704
  • Email: ch10@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B403
  • Academic Support Hours: Fridays, 9-11am
Dr Christian Luczanits
David L. Snellgrove Senior Lecturer in Tibetan and Buddhist Art
Christian Luczanits

History of art and architecture of the Himalayan region; Buddhist art of the western Himalayas; Gandharan art; presenting and exhibiting Buddhist art; heritage, preservation and conservation.

  • Tel: 020 7898 4162
  • Email: cl46@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B407
  • Academic Support Hours: Term 1: Wednesdays, 9:40-10:40; Fridays, 10-12
Professor Shane McCausland
Percival David Professor of the History of Art, Head of Department
Shane McCausland

Pictorial arts of China - especially painting and calligraphy; East Asian narrative art; canons, collecting and connoisseurship; Chinese art and modernity

  • Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4705
  • Email: HoD_SoA@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B304
  • Academic Support Hours: Wednesdays, 3.30-5pm or by email appointment
Dr Malcolm McNeill
Director of the SOAS Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art, Senior Lecturer in Arts Education
Dr Malcolm McNeill

Object based learning; museology; curation and display; the art market; Chinese visual and material culture; Buddhist visual and material culture

  • Email: mm133@soas.ac.uk
  • Academic Support Hours: Wednesdays, 4-5pm or by email appointment
Dr Simon O'Meara
Lecturer in the History of Architecture & Archaeology of the Islamic Middle East
Simon O'Meara

Islamic architecture and urbanism; sociological dimensions of the art and architecture of North Africa, especially Morocco; architectural and visual theory; Islamic studies.

  • Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4559
  • Email: so20@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B406
  • Academic Support Hours: Term 1: On leave; Term 2-3: Fridays, 11am-1pm
Dr Stacey Pierson
Reader in the History of Chinese Ceramics
Stacey Pierson

History and production of Chinese ceramics; history and theory of collecting; Museum Studies.

  • Tel: 020 7898 4441
  • Email: sp17@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B308
  • Academic Support Hours: Wednesdays, 10-12; other times by email request
Professor Scott Redford
Nasser D Khalili Professor of Islamic Art and Archaeology
Scott Redford

Art, archaeology, and architecture of Anatolia, the eastern Mediterranean, and SW Asia from the 11-14th centuries with a special interest in landscape, urbanism, and ceramics

  • Tel: 020 7898 4469
  • Email: sr63@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B303
  • Academic Support Hours: Mondays & Wednesdays 11-12 or by email appointment
Dr Polly Savage
Lecturer in the Art History of Africa
Polly Savage

History of African Art; Modern and contemporary art and curating in Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean, with particular focus on Haiti and Lusophone Africa; art and the Cold War in Africa; art education and cultural policy; post-colonial theory and trans-national exhibition practice.

Professor Timon Screech
Professor of the History of Art
Timon Screech
History of Japanese art; Edo painting; contacts between Japan and Europe in the 18th century; history of science in Japan; the theory of art history
  • Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4453
  • Email: ts8@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B408
  • Academic Support Hours: On leave (2020-2021)
Professor Ashley Thompson
Hiram W. Woodward Chair in Southeast Asian Art
Ashley Thompson

Southeast Asian arts, aesthetics, literatures and cultural histories, with a focus on Cambodia, from the Angkorian to the post-Angkorian to the contemporary; Theravadin Buddhist arts, literatures and ritual; cultural heritage; sexual difference; deconstruction; memory and textuality.

  • Tel: 020 7898 4130
  • Email: at50@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B301
  • Academic Support Hours: On leave (2020-2021)
Dr Joanna Wolfarth
Visiting Lecturer in Southeast Asian Art
IMG - Joanna Wolfarth

Southeast Asian arts and cultures; Buddhist art and doctrine; Cambodian culture from Angkor to the contemporary period; manifestations of power; photography and technologies of representation and replication; decolonial studies.

Teaching Fellows/GTAs

Mr David Malik
Senior Teaching Fellow
Malik David

African art; African visual cultures; contemporary urban arts in Sierra Leone

Dr Peter D. Sharrock
Senior Teaching Fellow
Peter Sharrock
He is now focusing on the evidence in Indochina for the influence of tantric or esoteric Buddhism, developed in the great monasteries of the Ganges valley and diffused and developed in different ways through much of Asia.
  • Tel: 020 7898 4462
  • Email: ps56@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B406
  • Academic Support Hours: By email appointment
Dr Tanja Tolar
Tanja Tolar

Art and architecture of the Islamic world; Cross-cultural dimensions of Islamic material culture; Glass and Ceramics of Islamic lands; Orientalism.

Emeritus Staff

Dr Geoffrey R D King
Emeritus Reader
Geoffrey King

Islamic art and archaeology in Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Yemen, UAE and Oman; late antiquity, Umayyads, Abbasids, Ayyubids and Mamluks

Professor Elizabeth Moore
Emeritus Professor
Elizabeth Moore
Arts of Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia cultural landscape; pre- and proto-historic Myanmar, Pyu and Mon culture; visual culture, social memory and sacred landscape
Dr Youngsook Pak
Emeritus Reader
Youngsook Pak

Korean art history (from prehistory to the 20th century), Buddhist art, Confucian elite and its culture, Text and Images

Professor John Picton
Emeritus Professor & Professorial Research Associate
John Picton

The art and archaeology of Nigeria, masquerade, textile history, 20th-century transformations in the visual culture of sub-Saharan Africa

Professors of Practice

Research Associates and Visiting Scholars

Professor Gina Barnes
Professorial Research Associate & Senior Teaching Fellow
Gina Barnes

State formation; agricultural transition; urbanisation; landscape archaeology; geoarchaeology, tectonic archaeology; East Asian archaeology especially Japanese archaeology and prehistory/protohistory

Dr Mehreen Chida-Razvi
Research Associate
Mehreen Chida-Razvi

History of Art & Architecture of the Muslim World, focusing on Mughal South Asia; Artistic, historic and cultural links between 17th Century Muslim South Asia and Iran, Anatolia and Europe; urbanism in Mughal South Asia.

Dr Farouk Yahya
Research Associate
Farouk Yahya

Southeast Asian art, Islamic art, illustrated and illuminated manuscripts and books, magic and divination.

Dr Valerie Gonzalez
Research Associate
Valerie Gonzalez

Islamic art history, aesthetics and visual culture. Phenomenology of artworks, cognitive processes, and issues of conceptualisation of visual forms in Islam. Relation between theory and practice in Islamic artistic creation.

Dr Charles Gore
Research Associate
Charlie Gore
Modern and contemporary arts of Africa, including its histories of photography; visual and material cultures of West Africa, and their linkages to diasporic arts past and present; the arts of the Benin kingdom, masquerade, textiles and other art forms in southern Nigeria, as well as a particular focus on contemporary arts in Nigeria.
  • Tel: 020 7898 4443
  • Email: cg2@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B402
  • Academic Support Hours: By email appointment
Professor Louise Tythacott
Professorial Research Associate
Louise Tythacott

Chinese and Buddhist art in museums; history of Yuanmingyuan (or ‘Summer Palace’) collections; museology; colonialism and material culture; post-colonial critiques of museum representations; history and theory of collecting; art and anthropology.