Transcultural Mobilities: People, Artifacts, Materials, 1300-1750

Art histories of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Baroque have all witnessed a global turn in recent decades. This full-day session seeks to bring together case studies from a wide variety of geographies and time periods to investigate approaches to transcultural exchange, mobilities and encounters. We wish to focus on people (artists, craftsmen, architects, diplomats, merchants, missionaries, translators etc.), artifacts, and materials as mediators of transregional interactions. What modes of analysis help us centre the mobilities of these agents? What role do techniques and skills, as well as images, objects, and the built environment play in these dynamics? What older narratives are challenged by these approaches, and what new narratives become possible? With this session we aim to enhance dialogue between scholars working in different subfields of art history and encourage broader conversations about the future of the discipline. We invite papers that focus on historical cases that will inform a discussion of these wider questions.

Submit your Paper via this form. Please download, complete and send it directly to the Session Convenor(s) below by Sunday 2 November 2025:

Robert Brennan, The Courtauld Institute of Art, robert.brennan@courtauld.ac.uk