Dr Leah R. Clark

My research explores the exchange and mobility of art objects in the early modern world. My latest book, Courtly Mediators: Transcultural Objects Between Renaissance Italy and the Islamic World (Cambridge University Press, 2023) investigates the exchange of objects—ceramics, metalwork, textiles, and aromatics—between Italian courts (Ferrara and Naples in particular) and the Mamluk and Ottoman courts in the fifteenth century. My other publications include Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court: Objects and Exchanges (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and European Art and the Wider World 1350-1550 (co-edited with Kathleen Christian, Manchester University Press, 2017).  I was co-investigator (with Katherine Wilson) of an interdisciplinary research network examining the mobility of objects (MOB) across and beyond European boundaries during the period 1000-1700, funded by the AHRC, which resulted in an exhibition and an edited volume. 

My research also engages with the sensorial experiences of early modern objects and I co-organise with Helen Coffey (Music, the Open University) an interdisciplinary annual conference on Early Modern Sensory Experiences (EMSE) at Kellogg College. I am also a co-convenor for Oxford’s Early Modern Italian World seminar, and a co-convenor of the TORCH Digital Humanities and Sensory Heritage (DHSH) network, led by Emanuela Vai.