Staff | Department of the History of Art & Archaeology at SOAS University of London

Dr Crispin Branfoot

Reader in the History of South Asian Art & Archaeology

Architecture, sculpture and painting in South Asia, especially in southern India; pilgrimage, sacred geography; material religion; histories of archaeology, conservation and collecting.

Tel: 020 7898 4450
Email: crispin.branfoot@soas.ac.uk
Room: 572
Academic Support Hours: Please email for appointment

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: 451
Academic Support Hours: By email appointment

Dr Monika Hinkel

Lecturer in the Arts of Japan

Japanese woodblock prints, Contemporary reworkings and interpretations of Ukiyo-e, Meiji nostalgia

Email: mh105@soas.ac.uk
Academic Support Hours: By email appointment

Dr Charlotte Horlyck

Reader in the History of Korean Art

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: 429
Academic Support Hours: Term 2: Fridays, 3:30pm-5:00pm

Dr Richard Hylton

Lecturer in Contemporary Art

Researching various aspects of contemporary art practice and display within the international arena including Diasporic art, African American art in the international arena, Black British artists, politics of curating, the role of art criticism, the relationships between contemporary art, ethnography, and the western museum.

Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4637
Email: rh73@soas.ac.uk
Room: 556
Academic Support Hours: Wednesdays, 11am-1pm

Dr Christian Luczanits

David L. Snellgrove Senior Lecturer in Tibetan and Buddhist Art

Premodern Indian and Tibetan Buddhist art and its context

Tel: 020 7898 4162
Email: cl46@soas.ac.uk
Room: 585
Academic Support Hours: Thursdays 10:00am-11:00am and 3:00pm-4:00pm

Professor Shane McCausland

Percival David Professor of the History of Art, Head of Department

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: sm80@soas.ac.uk
Room: 453
Academic Support Hours: By email appointment

Dr Malcolm McNeill

Director of the Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art & Senior Lecturer in Arts Education

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
Room: 468
Academic Support Hours: Wednesdays, 4-5pm or by email appointment

Dr Stephen A. Murphy

Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer in Curating and Museology of Asian Art

Curating, museology, and history of collections, especially in Southeast Asia and Asia more generally; debates surrounding the decolonising of museums. Buddhist and Hindu art and archaeology of Southeast Asia, especially Thailand and Laos. Indian Ocean World maritime networks and shipwrecks.

Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4638
Email: sm120@soas.ac.uk
Room: 587
Academic Support Hours: Tuesday 3-5pm

Dr Simon O'Meara

Senior Lecturer in the History of Architecture & Archaeology of the Islamic Middle East

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: 558
Academic Support Hours: Term 3: Thursdays, 11:30-1pm

Dr Stacey Pierson

Reader in the History of Chinese Ceramics

History and production of Chinese ceramics; history and theory of collecting and display

Tel: 020 7898 4441
Email: sp17@soas.ac.uk
Room: 566
Academic Support Hours: Wednesdays, 11:00am-1:00pm

Professor Scott Redford

Nasser D Khalili Professor of Islamic Art and Archaeology

Islamic art, archaeology, and architecture of the medieval (11th-14th) period in the central and eastern Islamic lands.

Tel: 020 7898 4469
Email: sr63@soas.ac.uk
Room: 428
Academic Support Hours: Wednesdays 3-5 and by appointment

Dr Polly Savage

Lecturer in the Art History of Africa

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.

Email: ps52@soas.ac.uk
Room: 554
Academic Support Hours: Fridays 9.30-11.30

Professor Ashley Thompson

Hiram W. Woodward Chair in Southeast Asian Art

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: +44 (0)20 7898 4130
Email: at50@soas.ac.uk
Room: 463
Academic Support Hours: Thursdays 10:00am-11:00am

Professor Louise Tythacott

Professor of Curating and Museology

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.

Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4159
Email: lt15@soas.ac.uk
Room: 505
Academic Support Hours: On research leave from September 2022-June 2023

Dr Panpan Yang

Lecturer in the Arts and Visual Cultures of Modern China

Arts and visual cultures of China and the Sinophone world; cinematic arts; animation and digital media; art theory; medium and materiality; cultural flows.

Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4647
Email: py6@soas.ac.uk
Room: 408
Academic Support Hours: Wednesdays, 2-3pm and by email appointment

Dr Elaine Buck

Senior Teaching Fellow

Art and archaeology of ancient and medieval China and the steppe and silk roads with a focus on religious art.

Tel: 020 7898 4705
Email: eb37@soas.ac.uk
Academic Support Hours: Mondays 3-5 and by appointment

Dr Hamid Keshmirshekan

Senior Teaching Fellow, Research Associate

Twentieth and twentieth-first century art from the Middle East

Email: hk5@soas.ac.uk

Dr David Malik

Teaching Fellow

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

Email: dm41@soas.ac.uk
Academic Support Hours: By email appointment

Dr Peter D. Sharrock

Senior Teaching Fellow

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: 558
Academic Support Hours: By email appointment

Dr Tanja Tolar

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

Email: tt30@soas.ac.uk
Academic Support Hours: By appointment only.

Professor Doris Behrens-Abouseif

Emeritus Professor

Architecture of Cairo, the art and archaeology of Turkey, Iran and the Near East

Email: da30@soas.ac.uk

Dr Heather Elgood, MBE

Founder and Director Emerita of the Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art

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.

Email: he2@soas.ac.uk
Academic Support Hours: By email appointment

Dr Geoffrey R D King

Emeritus Reader

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

Arts of Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia cultural landscape; pre- and proto-historic Myanmar, Pyu and Mon culture; visual culture, social memory and sacred landscape

Email: em4@soas.ac.uk

Dr Youngsook Pak

Emeritus Reader

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

Email: yp@soas.ac.uk

Professor John Picton

Emeritus Professor & Professorial Research Associate

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

Email: jp17@soas.ac.uk

Professor Michael Rogers

Emeritus Professor

Professor Timon Screech

Professor of the History of Art

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: 565
Academic Support Hours: On leave (2020-2021)

Professor Roderick Whitfield

Professorial Research Associate & Emeritus Professor

Email: rw5@soas.ac.uk

Dr May al-Ibrashy

Professor of Practice (Islamic Architecture)

Email: ma157@soas.ac.uk

Dr Gus Casely-Hayford

Professor of Practice

Email: gus.casely-hayford@soas.ac.uk

Professor Gina Barnes

Professorial Research Associate & Senior Teaching Fellow

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

Email: gb11@soas.ac.uk

Professor Anthony Cutler

Professorial Research Associate