ABOUT // Dr Emma Merkling
I specialise in interdisciplinary research on late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British art, science, and occultism. My research to date has explored Victorian painting, photography, sculpture, and visual culture c. 1870–1920, centring women artists and/or issues of gender and sexuality, in relation to histories of science and the body.
Recent projects have focused on artists Annie Swynnerton (1844–1933), Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879), and Evelyn De Morgan (1855–1919), and on the medium Mina ‘Margery’ Crandon (1888–1941). For more information, visit my research and publications pages.
Since 2021, I have co-hosted (with Dr Christy Slobogin) Drawing Blood, a podcast about visual culture, the history of science and medicine, and the macabre. I am also Deputy Associate Director of Research at Durham University’s Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies International.
I hold a PhD in History of Art from The Courtauld Institute of Art (2021) for a thesis on the spiritualist art and automatic writings of Evelyn De Morgan in relation to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century physics, mathematics, psychology, philosophy of science, statistics, and psychical research. This project was supervised by Professor Caroline Arscott. I also hold an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld (2017) and a BA in Art History and Archaeology from Columbia College, Columbia University in the City of New York (2015).
Please email me for a full CV.
contact me via email // twitter