Profile
Biography
MA (Courtauld Institute of Art), PhD (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), FSA
Hanna Vorholt is a Senior Lecturer in History of Art. Before joining the Department as an Anniversary Research Lecturer in 2012, she held positions and fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for History, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University Library, the British Library, and the Warburg Institute.
Departmental roles
Director of the Medieval Art and Medievalisms Research Cluster
Research
Overview
- Early media technologies, esp. illuminated manuscripts
- Art and science in the middle ages
- Medieval encyclopaedias, maps and diagrams
- Jerusalem in medieval art and architecture
- Romanesque art and its cultural and intellectual contexts
- Typology and visual argumentation
- Iconicity of script and notation
Hanna researches medieval art and in particular illuminated manuscripts. Her book Shaping Knowledge presents the first monograph on the transmission of the Liber Floridus, one of the most enigmatic medieval encyclopaedias. It offers new evidence regarding our understanding of the mechanisms which inform the way knowledge is produced, recorded and transformed. Her co-edited books Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem and Between Jerusalem and Europe are concerned with Jerusalem in its relationship to medieval imagination, art and architecture.
Projects
Hanna is currently writing the book Images on Lines: Ruling and Illumination in Medieval Manuscripts, funded by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship. A Grants in Focus feature about her project can be found in the Annual Review of the Leverhulme Trust.
Research group(s)
Centre for Medieval Studies
Medieval Art and Medievalisms
Grants
- Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship, 2022-2024
- British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, Warburg Institute, 2007-2010
- Munby Fellowship in Bibliography, Cambridge University Library, 2006-2007
- Frances A. Yates Fellowship, Warburg Institute, 2003
Collaborators
- Co-Investigator AHRC-funded research project The Production and Reading of Music Sources (Bangor University, Manchester University, King’s College London, Warburg Institute), PI Professor Thomas Schmidt, 2010-2014
- Collaborator ERC-funded research project Visual Translations of Jerusalem (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), PI Professor Bianca Kühnel, 2010-2015
Membership in Research Networks
- DFG Network Zeitenwelten
- AHRC Network Remembered Place and Invented Traditions
- AHRC Network Imagining Jerusalem 1099 to the Present Day
Supervision
Hanna welcomes enquiries from students wanting to undertake research in related areas.
In progress
- Aikaterini Perdiki, 'Greek and Latin maps associated with Macrobius' (co-supervision with Dr Divna Manolova)
Completed
- Eleanor Jackson, To hold infinity in the palm of your hand: the Insular pocket gospel books re-evaluated (AHRC-funded, co-supervised with Dr Jane Hawkes)
- Elizabeth Wright, 'The Representation of the Book in the Visual and Textual Culture of Anglo-Saxon England' (Wolfson Scholarship, co-supervision with Prof. Elizabeth Tyler)
- Claudia Jung, 'Visual translations of Jerusalem in the Early Modern Netherlands' (ERC-funded, co-supervision with Dr Jeanne Nuechterlein)
- Blair Apgar, 'Romanesque Architecture in Lombardy' (co-supervision with Prof. Amanda Lillie)
- Cher Casey, 'Sacred skulls, textiles, and medieval veneration: Exploring the Holy Head reliquaries of Cologne' (ORS Scholarship, co-supervision with Prof. Jane Hawkes)