Profile

Biography

BA (Cantab), MA (London), PhD (London)

Tom specialises in medieval art, architecture and visual culture, particularly in the Iberian Peninsula. He joined the History of Art Department in 2009 after completing his PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

Tom investigates two areas that intersect in the Iberian Peninsula. Research in the early stages of his career focused on gothic art and architecture across Europe, particularly its relationship to the sacred and profane uses of space. Recent work interrogates the connections between art and belief in medieval Iberia, particularly as a consequence of encounters between Christian, Islamic and Jewish traditions. His undergraduate courses cover material that ranges geographically from Prague to Portugal, and chronologically from eighth-century Aachen to nineteenth-century Yorkshire. He also teaches a specialist postgraduate course on cross-cultural contacts in medieval Iberia.

Tom is involved in a number of bids for interdisciplinary research grants, and is a member of an international project based at Santiago de Compostela in Spain, 'Literary and Visual Culture in the Crown of Castile, 1284-1350'. He is currently editing select papers from a two-day international conference he organised in York in July 2011, 'Constructing Memory in Medieval Spain'. These will be published in a special issue of the Hispanic Research Journal in 2012.Tom is Director of the Medieval and Medievalisms Research School in York's History of Art Department.

Departmental roles

• Admissions Tutor
  
• Overseas, Visiting and Exchange Students Officer
• Research Committee
  
• Medieval Art and Medievalisms Research School
  Director
  

Research

Overview

• Art, architecture and visual culture in medieval Europe (with a particular interest in the Iberian Peninsula)
  
• Cross-cultural exchange in the medieval Mediterranean
  
• Historiography
  

Tom’s research focuses on the Iberian Peninsula as a contact zone between northern European traditions and those of the wider Mediterranean. His topics of specialisation include: the introduction of gothic architecture in the Iberian peninsula, the role of Islamic textiles in Islamic and Christian societies, saintly cults and sacred topography, and relationships between text, performance and material culture. 

Current projects

Tom’s current research focuses on multilingual inscriptions in medieval Iberia, exploring issues of literacy, performance and language in Iberian's multi-confessional communities. He is also revising his doctoral thesis for publication, provisionally entitled Toledo Cathedral: Art & Belief in Medieval Castile. This work provides a new history of Spain's primatial cathedral, analysing its architecture, urban setting, decoration and liturgy as a way of addressing issues of wider significance to the Iberian Peninsula. Tom’s wider interests include Umayyad visual culture in the Middle East, text/image discrepancies in the Middle Ages, Renaissance architectural theory and print culture, and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century architecture in Britain and Latin America.  

Research group(s)

• Medieval Art and Medievalisms
  Director
• Architectural History and Theory
  
• Sculpture Studies

Collaborators

• Dr Rosa Vidal (Queen Mary's, London) Preparing a long-term interdisciplinary research project on the theme of 'Oral Translations in Iberia, c. 1302-1517'.
  
• Professor Rocio Sanchez Ameijeiras (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain) Part of a research project entitled, ‘Literary and Visual Culture in the Crown of Castile, 1284-1350'.
  

Supervision

Tom is particularly interested in hearing from students interested in pursuing doctoral research in the fields of art, architecture and visual culture in medieval Europe (and its historiography), and cultural exchange in the medieval Mediterranean.

Doctoral Students 

Beth Kaneko (co-supervised with Sethina Watson), 'No Two Alike: The Representation of Space in English Local Maps in the Late Middle Ages'.

Sophie Dentzer, 'Masonic Design in Fourteenth-Century England'.

Matilde Grimaldi, 'Tortosa cathedral, 1148-1347'.

Publications

Selected publications

• ‘Reframing the Bible: Genesis and Exodus on Toledo Cathedral's Fourteenth-Century Choir Screen’, in Gesta, 50:1, 2011, pp. 71-89
• ‘Art and Belief in Medieval Castile’, in Spiritual Temporalities in Late-Medieval Europe (ed. M. Foster), 2010, pp. 99-126. 
• ‘La Catedral: su Historia Constructiva’, in La Catedral Primada de Toledo (ed. R. Gonzálvez), 2010, pp. 148-161.
• Review of ‘A Reassessment of the Western Parts of the Romanesque Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela’, in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 163, 2010, pp.181-83.
• ‘The Locked-Up Garden. Art and Nature in Medieval Castile’, Immediations 2:2, 2009, pp. 19-29.
• ‘The Royal Tombs of Santes Creus: Negotiating the Royal Image in Medieval Iberia', Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 72:1, 2009, pp. 1-14.
• ‘Moral Edification at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge’, Architectural History, 48, 2005, pp. 49-68. 
  

Teaching

Undergraduate

• The Virgin's Places: Chartres, Siena & Castile
• Royal Spaces in Medieval Europe: Church, City & Realm
• Medievalisms
• Medieval Cairo: An Introduction to Islamic Architecture
  

Postgraduate

• Art & Identities in Medieval Spain
• Reconsidering Romanesque Spain
• Core Course in the Interdisciplinary MA at the Centre for Medieval Studies in York 
  

External activities

Memberships

• ARTES - an Iberian and Latin American Visual Culture Group
• British Archaeological Association

Editorial duties

• Hispanic Research Journal, Annual Visual Arts Issue  
  Co-editor

Invited talks and conferences

• ‘Measuring Mary’, Hispanic Research Seminar, Oxford University, 7 February 2012
• ‘Locating the Virgin in Medieval Iberia’, Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar, Queen Mary University, 10 February 2012.
• ‘Copying Córdoba? Islamicate Architecture in Medieval Iberia’, History of Art Research Seminar, University of Bristol, 13 February 2012.
• ‘Between Convivencia and Conservatism: Negotiating Toledo Cathedral’, at The Artistic Legacy of Medieval Cathedrals in Present-Day Europe, University of Girona, 11 Nov 2011.
• ‘Remembering Fernando: multilingual inscriptions in medieval Iberia’, Research Seminar, V&A Museum, 15 May 2011.
• ‘Reviewing texts: multilingual inscriptions in medieval Spain’, Postcolonising the Medieval Image, University of Leeds, 7-9 July 2010.
• ‘Consensus Politics in Medieval Spain’, Medieval Research Seminar, Cambridge University, 10 May 2010.
• ‘Art History and Historians of Medieval Spain’, AAH Annual Conference, Glasgow, 16 April 2010.
• ‘God is the Victor: Polemical Inscriptions in Medieval Andalucia’, Research Seminar in Islamic Art, School of Oriental & African Studies, 25 March 2010.
• ‘Children of Cain: Picturing Polemic after 1391’, Hebrew Literature, the Bible and the Andalusi Tradition in the Fifteenth Century, CSIC, Madrid, 5-6 October, 2009.
• ‘Gates of Paradise? Getting into Medieval Spain’, Convivencia: Representations, Knowledge and Identities (500- 1600AD, CSIC, Madrid, May 2009.
• ‘Crusader Kings: Toledo's royal chapels’, Medieval Work in Progress Seminar, Courtauld Institute of Art, December 2008.

Organised workshops and conferences

• ‘The Crucifixion, Fresh Perspectives’, symposium, York, 20 February 2012.
• ‘Oral Translations in Iberia, 1302-1519’, workshop, York, 10 December 2011.
• ‘Constructing Memory in Medieval Spain’, international conference, University of York, 15-16 July 2011.
• ‘Syncretism in Medieval Iberia’, workshop, University of York, 14 July 2011.
• ‘Plaster Casts at South Kensington. Reproducing Art in the 19^th Century’, symposium (with Marjorie Trusted), Victoria & Albert Museu,. 20 May 2011.
• ‘Juxtapositions in Medieval Iberia’, workshop (with Rosa Vidal), Queen Mary, 20 January 2011.