About

I am a non-academic social historian of art. I specialise in representations of otherness in the social and cultural history of early modern European art.

I explore themes of the human-animal divide in representations of otherness. This touches on subjects such as foreignness, religion, gender, and class. I analyse pictorial prints (woodcuts and engravings) and text in sixteenth-century German chronicles, ‘wonder books’, travel tales, fables, printed maps, broadsheets, pamphlets, and interactive prints with flaps and spinning dials.

Most of the posts on this website are designed with the interested general audience in mind. I believe that academic research should be made more accessible. With that in mind, all posts on this website are free to use and share with attribution. All images should be equally referenced and captioned.

Read my top posts:

A Brief Historical Background to the Werewolf Myth in Sixteenth-Century Germany
Getting Started on ‘Academic Twitter’
Cynocephali – The Dog-Headed Race: A Brief Introduction
Monstrous Women: Hair, Gender, and Sexuality in Early Modern German Prints
Witches in Sixteenth-Century Germany: The belief in witches, what they were accused of and why

Research on this website was with the support of the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and The Bill Cowan Barr Smith Library Fellowship.