Dr.ⁱⁿ habil. Romana Sammern

The art historian Romana Sammern researches and teaches at the intersection of the body, image, and medicine in the early modern period. In 2024, she completed her habilitation in art history and visual studies at the University of Passau.

Current projects

Beauty: The Body as Artefact. Historical Sources from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period, co-ed. with Julia Saviello (London: Routledge, 2026).

Pygmalion: Artificial Bodies and Living Statues in the Arts (Künstliche Körper und lebende Statuen in den Künsten), in preparation (to appear in the Figurations of Transition series, Sonderzahl).

Sustainably Ephemeral: On the Materiality of Decay (Nachhaltig vergänglich. Zur Materialität des Verfalls,), co-ed. with Jasmin Mersmann and Yorick Berta, in preparation (to appear in the Figurations of Transition series, Sonderzahl)

Visual Arts and Medicine in Early Modern Europe and Beyond: A Collection of Essays and Sources, co-ed. with Robert Brennan and Fabian Jonietz, in print (Manchester University Press)

Art and Cosmetics, 1500-1800 (habilitation project, funded by the Elise Richter Programme of the FWF, V822)

Physiology. Series of events on visualisations of physiological constitutions and their role in the genesis, transformation and dissemination of knowledge (medical, natural history, etc.) along concrete physical processes: Witnessing, birthing, ageing, dying, digesting (at the Focus Area Figurations of Transition at Knowledges & Arts).

List of Publications

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