History of Art

I have taught at University College Cork since 2001, having previously worked in Scotland for the universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde. I moved to Ireland to set up the new subject area of Art History in UCC and was heavily involved in designing the university's BA and HDip programmes in the discipline. In 2003 I was appointed interim head of unit, followed by a promotion to a senior lectureship in 2007, from which year I took on the headship duties on a full-time basis.

Educated both in Italy (at the universities of Florence and Rome) and Scotland, I completed an MA (1991) and PhD (1997) at the University of Glasgow. My doctoral research, sponsored by the SOED, examined the social and political contexts of Lucchese painting between 1369 and 1430; it was mostly carried out in Tuscany. In 1993 I attended the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, as the recipient of an Italian government research grant, whilst undertaking fieldwork in the state and ecclesiastical archives of Lucca and Florence.

I teach and write about Italian art and architecture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. My research has particularly focused upon the artistic culture of Tuscany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.