Mirjam Brusius

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Ph.D.

Residence: September 1, 2012 - August 31, 2013

Profile

Mirjam Brusius is working on a book project concerning the meaning of Middle Eastern archaeological objects during the transition period on their way to Europe when the finds seem to have no status. The project investigates the subsequent processes of canonization and decanonization these objects caused upon their arrival in the leading museums of the nineteenth century. Further projects include articles on the history of photography and expeditions in the Middle East, a short monograph on the archive and scholarly practices of the British pioneer of photography W.H.F. Talbot as well as a co-edited volume on Talbot's interest beyond photography to be published by Yale University Press in 2013.

Mirjam read art history, cultural studies and musicology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Université Paris III. From 2007 to 2011 she was a PhD candidate in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and the British Library where she catalogued Talbot’s versatile notebooks as part of her AHRC funded collaborative PhD project. Her thesis (supervised by Prof Simon Schaffer) "Preserving the Forgotten – W.H.F. Talbot, Photography and the Antique" explored the co-emergence of photography and the antique sciences in Victorian Britain. During this time she spent a year as a visiting fellow at MPIWG and Freie Universität and also undertook field trips to the Middle East.

Before returning to Department II, she spent a year travelling to some of the archives of the 'statusless objects' and held fellowships at the Paul Mellon Centre, the Yale Center for British Art, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the German Historical Institute London, the Centre Allemand d'Histoire de l'Art de Paris and most recently at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, where she will continue her affiliation with the project "Connecting Art Histories in the Museum" based at the Staatliche Museen Berlin.