School of Arts awarded $100,000 grant from the Getty Foundation to run online seminar programme

25 March 2021

The SOAS School of Arts has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Getty Foundation to run an online seminar programme for young and early career researchers in the art and archaeology of the medieval eastern Mediterranean, as part of its Connecting Art Histories initiative.

Medieval Eastern Mediterranean Cities as Places of Artistic Interchange is an online seminar programme for emerging academics which focuses on the role played by cities in the medieval eastern Mediterranean, from the 12th to the 14th centuries CE, in the production, consumption, transformation and understanding of works of art and architecture.

This seminar pairs cities, scholars and the site-specific questions that arise from them to explore these and other aspects of artistic and cultural interchange in the medieval eastern Mediterranean region, with a particular focus on new research in lesser-known cities to highlight recent archaeological and other scholarly discoveries.

Professor Scott Redford, Lead Academic Organiser of the programme said: “The Connecting Art Histories initiative fits well into SOAS's decolonisation initiatives, as it aims to decenter art history by funding programmes like this for early career academics all around the world. The current programme is about the medieval eastern Mediterranean and its participants are all from the countries of the eastern Mediterranean.”

12 participants from the countries of the eastern Mediterranean have been selected to take part in the course which is online this year for the first time.

The seminar begins on Friday 26 March and runs for 8 weeks.

Find out more about the programme on the SOAS website and Getty Foundation website.