Hannah Semsarha

Hannah Semsarha is a fifth-year PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Bonn, funded by a Gerda Henkel PhD Scholarship.

Her dissertation, The Joint Depiction of Artist and Commissioner in Renaissance Art, analyzes how artists and commissioners appeared together within images, showing how Renaissance art functioned as a medium through which social order was negotiated and ideas of status and visibility were transformed.

Her research engages the relationship between art and society in early modern Europe, with particular attention to portraiture, social order, and Visual Studies.

She holds an MA in Art History with Distinction from the University of Bonn and a BA in Art History and German Language and Literature from the University of Cologne, with exchange study at the Universitat de Barcelona and at the Free University and Humboldt University of Berlin.

She has held research and teaching roles at the University of Bonn and worked on curatorial and editorial projects with the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Museum Ludwig, and the Bundeskunsthalle. Her publications range from early modern art to contemporary visual culture.

At Harvard, she will pursue her dissertation research and looks forward to academic exchange and collaboration across disciplines. She invites correspondence at hannahsemsarha@fas.harvard.edu.

_{Photo: © Jean-Luc Ikelle-Matiba}