Profile

Biography

Anthony Geraghty is Senior Lecturer in the History of Art. He is an architectural historian, with a specialist interest in the early modern period in England. He joined the department in 2002, having previously taught at the Glasgow School of Art in 1998-2002.

Departmental roles

• Director of PhD Programme
• Research Committee
  
• Graduate Studies Committee
  
• Director of School of Architectural History and Theory

Research

Overview

I work on late 17th and 18th-century English architecture, and have made a particular study of the office practice of Sir Christopher Wren. In 2007 I published a major catalogue of the Wren drawings archive at All Souls College, Oxford.

My latest research concerns university architecture. I am interested in how academic institutions were accommodated within buildings, and in how the theory and practice of architecture was accommodated within places of learning.

Current projects

I am currently completing a full-scale history of the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. The Sheldonian Theatre: Architecture and Learning in Restoration Oxford is a contextual study of Wren’s first major work, setting the building – as a project and an object - within the wider political, architectural and intellectual history of the period. The project is funded by a British Academy Research Development Award (2008-09) and a University of York Anniversary Lectureship (2009-10).

Research group(s)

• Architectural History and Theory
  Director
• Renaissance and Baroque Cluster
• British Art

Grants

Large grants & research awards include:

• 2008: British Academy Research Development Award towards my forthcoming book, The Sheldonian Theatre: Architecture and Society in Early Modern Oxford.
  
• 2005: English Heritage, towards two PhD studentships.
• 2000-2004: Various research grants from English Heritage, Paul Mellon Centre, AHRC, and the British Academy towards The Architectural Drawings of Sir Christopher Wren.

Supervision

In Progress

• James Jago, 'Court, Capital, Province: The Reassessment and Exemplars of Private Religious Space in Early Modern England, 1600-1660' (AHRC funded).
  
• James Legard, 'Vanbrugh, Blenheim Palace, and the Meanings of Baroque Architecture'
  
• Evan McWilliams, 'Churches for the Book of Common Prayer: Anglican liturgy and design in the first half of the 20th century'
  
• Frances Sands, 'Nostell Priory: History of a House, 1730-85' (funded by the Society of Architectural Historians (GB)).

Awarded

• Ann-Marie Akehurst, 'Architecture and Philanthropy: Building Hospitals in Eighteenth-Century York (Jointly supervised with Professor Mark Hallett).
  
• Joanne O'Hara, 'Colen Campbell and the Preparatory drawings for Vitruvius Britannicus' (funded by English Heritage and the Society of Architectural Historians (GB)).
  
• Marie Prior, 'Style, Perception and Identity: The Gothic Bridge in London and York, 1740 - 1881' (AHRC funded).
  
• Matthew Walker, 'Architectus Ingenio: Robert Hooke, the Early Royal Society and the Practices of Architecture ' (funded by English Heritage and the Society of Architectural Historians (GB)).

Publications

Selected publications

• 'Nicholas Hawksmoor's Drawing technique of the 1690s and John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in Helen Hills, (ed.) Rethinking the Baroque (Aldershot, 2011), pp. 125-41.
• 'The "dissociation of sensibility" and the "tyranny of intellect": T.S. Eliot, John Summerson and Christopher Wren', in Salmon, F. (ed.) The Persistence of the Classical: Essays on Architecture Presented to David Watkin (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2008), 26-39. 
• 'Sir Howard Colvin' (obituary), The Burlington Magazine, 150, September 2008, 613-14
• The Architectural Drawings of Sir Christopher Wren at All Souls College, Oxford: A Complete Catalogue (London: Lund Humphries, 2007).
• 'Robert Hooke's Collection of Architectural Books and Prints', in Architectural History, 47 (2004), 113-25.
• 'Wren's preliminary design for the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford', in Architectural History, 45 (2002), 275-288. 
• 'St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough: A Gothic Mausoleum for Napoleon III', Apollo, CXLIII (January 1996), 9-12. Reprinted (in French) in L'Architecture Normande en Europe: Identités et Échanges, ed. by Martin Kew Meade, Marseille 2002. 
• 'Edward Woodroofe: Sir Christopher Wren's first draughtsman', in The Burlington Magazine, CXLIII (August 2001), 474-9. 
• 'Nicholas Hawksmoor and the Wren City Church Steeples', in The Georgian Group Journal, 10 (2000), 1-14. 
• 'Introducing Thomas Laine: Draughtsman to Sir Christopher Wren', in Architectural History, 42 (1999), 240-5.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Architecture and Politics in Stuart England
  

Postgraduate

• Sir John Vanbrugh and Friends: English Baroque Architecture
  
• Wren
  

External activities

Memberships

Invited talks and conferences

• 'The Built Frontispiece' 
  Conference Paper, Society of Renaissance Studies, York, July 2010
  
• 'Drawing as mathematical practice' 
  Public Lecture, Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, July 2009
  
• 'Christopher Wren and the Restoration' 
  Chichele Lecture, All Souls College, Oxford, May 2009
  
• 'The Built Frontispiece' 
  Conference Paper, Society of Renaissance Studies, York, July 2010
  
• 'Robert Streeter at the Sheldonian'
  Conference paper at 'British Art 1660-1735: Close Readings', Tate Britain, London, 20 May 2011.
  
•  'History and Architectural History: Colvin's Canterbury Quadrangle'
  Conference paper at the 'Architectural History after Colvin', The Annual Symposium of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, St John's College, Oxford, 21 May 2011.
  
• 'The Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford and Contemporary Debates about
  Learning'
  London Seminar for Early Modern Visual Culture, 5 December 2011