RESEARCH // Dr Emma Merkling

Current projects

• ‘Alchemy and the Anglo-Florentines: Neoplatonism, Occultism, and Evelyn De Morgan’s Renaissance’ // Wallace Fellow, I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies // 2023–24

• ‘Finding Annie Swynnerton: British-Italian Symbolist Networks in Rome, 1880–1920’ // Paul Mellon Centre Rome Fellow, The British School at Rome // 2023–24

Past projects

• The Victorian Idyll in Art and Literature: Subject, Ecology, Form (New York: Routledge, 2024) // co-edited collection of essays rethinking the idyll as a formal mode across Victorian culture, foregrounding issues of gender and sexuality, race, and ecology
  
  
• ‘Biomedicine and Belief: Spiritualism, Observation, and Margery Crandon's Extraordinary Body’ // Postdoctoral Fellow (Principal Investigator), International Research Network for the Study of Science and Belief in Society // 2022 // view keynote lecture here; read blog post update on the project here
  
  
• Anglo-American scientific photography of spiritualist mediums in British archives // Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for American Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art // 2022

• ‘The Media of Mediumship: Encountering the Material Culture of Modern Occultism in Britain’s Science, Technology, and Magic Collections’ // Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Science Museum Group, Senate House Library, and University of Stirling // 2021–22 // view curatorial outcomes here, here, and here

• ‘Imponderable: Physics, Mathematics, Psychical Research, and Evelyn De Morgan's Spiritualist Art, 1885–1910’ // PhD in History of Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art // supervised by Professor Caroline Arscott, examined by Professor Sally Shuttleworth and Dr Suzannah Biernoff // 2017–21