SOAS University of London

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

Departmental Staff

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

Professor Anna Contadini

Learning & Teaching Coordinator

Professor Shane McCausland

Research Coordinator

Dr Rachel Harris

Undergraduate Admissions Tutor & Undergraduate Tutor

Dr Simon O'Meara

Postgraduate Taught Courses Tutor & MA Admissions Tutor

Prof Timon Screech

Research Admissions Tutor/Research Tutor

Prof Timon Screech

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.
Anna Contadini
Professor of the History of Islamic Art
Head of Department
Director of the 'Treasures of SOAS' project
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
  • Office Hours: By email appointment
Pamela Corey
Lecturer in South East Asian Art
Pamela Corey

Modern and contemporary art and critical theory; Southeast Asian art history and visual studies (expertise in Vietnam and Cambodia); urban studies; postcolonial studies; theories of subjectivity, space, diaspora, transnationalism, intermedia and aesthetics.

  • Tel: 0207 898 4452
  • Email: pc50@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B318
  • Office Hours: Tuesdays 10.30-12.30pm
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
  • Office Hours: Tuesdays 2-5pm or by email appointment
Charles Gore
Senior Lecturer in the History of African Art
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: B305
  • Office Hours: Wednesdays 2-3.30pm
Charlotte Horlyck
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
  • Office Hours: Thursday 5-6pm and by email appointment
Jaeho Kang
Senior Lecturer in Critical Media and Cultural Studies
Jaeho Kang

Critical Theory; Media Theory; Aesthetics; Art, Technology and Politics; Media Spectacle and Urban Space in East Asian Cities; Screen Culture and Media Art in Korea; Mega-Events in the Global South

  • Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4585
  • Email: jk71@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 510
  • Office Hours: Tuesdays 5-6 pm & Thursdays 5-6 pm
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
  • Office Hours: Friday 10am-12pm
Shane McCausland
Percival David Professor of the History of Art
Shane McCausland

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

  • Tel: 020 7898 4705
  • Email: sm80@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B304
  • Office Hours: Term 2: Thursdays, 3-4 p.m; or by appointment
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: 020 7898 4559
  • Email: so20@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B302
  • Office Hours: Fridays 12:15-1pm & 5-6pm
Stacey Pierson
Senior Lecturer in 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
  • Office Hours: Tuesdays 1-2.30pm
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
  • Office Hours: Tuesdays 3-5pm and by appointment
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
  • Office Hours: Tuesdays 3-4pm
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
  • Office Hours: Wednesday 2-4pm
Tania Tribe
Senior Lecturer in Art History
Tania Tribe
Painting in Africa and the Americas; theory of art with special reference to Northeastern Africa
  • Tel: 020 7898 4462
  • Email: tt10@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B406
  • Office Hours: Tuesdays 4-5pm
Louise Tythacott
Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer in Curating and Museology of Asian Art
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.

  • Tel: 020 7898 4159
  • Email: lt15@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B320
  • Office Hours: On Research Leave until term 2 2018-2019

Visiting Lecturers

Maria Kostoglou
Lecturer in Curating and Museology
Maria Kostoglou

Curating archaeological collections; university museums and curriculum reform; heritage interpretation; artefact and material culture studies; ancient metalwork; archaeology of the 1st millennium BC eastern Mediterranean

  • Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4159
  • Email: mk124@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B320
  • Office Hours: Thursday 11:00-12:00 (term time) or by appointment

Teaching Fellows/GTAs

Nixi Cura
Senior Teaching Fellow
Staff Silhouette
  • Email: nc43@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B304
  • Office Hours: Term 2: Tuesdays, 10:00-12:00; or by appointment
Polly Savage
Senior Teaching Fellow
Polly Savage

Contemporary art and curatorial strategies in twentieth and twenty-first century Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean; post-independence visual arts in Angola, Madagascar and Haiti; post-colonial critique and trans-national exhibition practice.

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
  • Office Hours: Wednesdays 3pm-4pm
Tanja Tolar
Senior Teaching Fellow
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

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

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
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

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

Research Associates

Gina Barnes
Senior Teaching Fellow
Professorial Research Associate
Gina Barnes

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

Marine Cabos
Research Associate
Marine Cabos

History of photography in China; Modern and contemporary arts of China; Founder of photographyofchina.com, platform whose goal is to present photographic material related to China.

Anthony Cutler
Professorial Research Associate
Anthony Cutler

Cultural relations between Byzantium and early Islam; ivory carving in these societies.

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.

Other Staff

Postdoctoral Researchers

Chiara Bellini
Postdoctoral Researcher in Tibetan and Buddhist Art
Chiara Bellini

History of art and Architecture of the Himalayan region.