Satomi Hiyama (Karino)

Satomi Hiyama studied Art History at Keio University, obtaining her MA in Comparative Literature and Culture at University of Tokyo in 2009, and her PhD in Art History at the Freie Universität of Berlin in 2014 with a dissertation on the mural paintings of Buddhist rock monasteries in Kucha. She has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universtät in Munich, at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, and at Ryukoku University in Kyoto. Since 2018 she has worked as an Assistant Professor at the Hakubi Center for Advanced Research of Kyoto University. Her current research projects deal with 1) visual and spatial concepts of early Buddhist rock monasteries in Kucha, and 2) cosmological and astral representations in Central and East Asian Buddhist visual arts in the fifth to seventh centuries. She is currently working on her two book projects on the mural paintings of Buddhist monastic sites in Kucha. At the MPIWG she is collaborating with the project Visualizations of the Heavens in Department III. In addition to her academic research, Satomi is engaged in various outreach activities, such as contributing to the curation of exhibitions (most recently for the Humboldt Forum in Berlin), and giving public talks at academic institutions worldwide.