University of Oxford
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Dr Leah R Clark

Dr Leah R Clark

Associate Professor in History of Art

Kellogg College

leah.clark@conted.ox.ac.uk 

I am Associate Professor in the History of Art and a Fellow of Kellogg College as well as Director of Studies in History of Art for Oxford Lifelong Learning.  I am a specialist of early modern objects, particularly in the area of collecting, sensoriality, and transculturality. 

Research Interests

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) won the inaugural Italian Art Society Book prize in 2025. It 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), European Art and the Wider World 1350-1550 (co-edited with Kathleen Christian, 2017) and Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000-1700 (co-edited with Katherine Wilson, 2022; a result of an AHRC-funded interdisciplinary research network examining the mobility of objects (MOB)). I am currently writing a short Cambridge University Press Renaissance 'Element' on Early Modern Transcultural Objects (forthcoming, 2027) and I am also co-curating a major exhibition at the Ashmolean (with Geraldine Johnson) on sensory encounters and exchanges in the Early Modern World (opening in summer 2027). I am dedicated to widening participation and I have been involved in a number of outreach projects in Art History. In 2016 I founded Open Arts Objects, a project that provides free open access films to support the teaching of Art History in schools (shortlisted for a Times Higher Education Awards 2019). I am currently working with the blind and partially sighted with Susan Griffiths (GLAM) to co-produce interactives to make Art History more accessible. You can follow me on Twitter @DrLeahRClark

Publications

Courtly Mediators: Transcultural Objects between Renaissance Italy and the Islamic World
Featured Publication

Courtly Mediators: Transcultural Objects between Renaissance Italy and the Islamic World

(Cambridge University Press, July 2023)

In Courtly Mediators, Leah R. Clark investigates the exchange of a range of materials and objects, including metalware, ceramic drug jars, Chinese porcelain, and aromatics, across the early modern Italian, Mamluk, and Ottoman courts. She provides a new narrative that places Aragonese Naples at the center of an international courtly culture, where cosmopolitanism and the transcultural flourished, and in which artists, ambassadors, and luxury goods actively participated.