Prof. Dr. Vera-Simone Schulz

Portrait
21335 Lüneburg, Universitätsallee 1, C5.408
Fon +49.4131.677-2742 , vera-simone.schulz@leuphana.de

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Vita

Vera-Simone Schulz is an art historian working at the crossroads of African, Islamic and European art histories and critical museology. She holds the professorship for transcultural art history (W1) at Leuphana University Lüneburg and is an associate researcher at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut. 

 
Vera-Simone Schulz studied art history, philosophy and Russian literature in Berlin, Moscow, and Damascus. Her PhD thesis on Florence and Tuscany in their Mediterranean and global entanglements already went beyond the common geographical framework of art historical analyses concerned with Italy and the Islamic world by also discussing material from West, Central and Eastern Africa in this context. It is forthcoming in the form of two monographs “Infiltrating Artifacts: Florence and Tuscany in their Mediterranean and Global Entanglements” and “Florence and Tuscany in a Global Perspective: Complexifying Notions of Connectivity and Resistance”. Her habilitation project and book-in-progress “East Africa’s Elsewheres: Archipelagic Thinking and Transcultural Art Histories” moves from Florence as one of the traditional centers of art history to the East African coast, questioning canons and canonization processes and contributing to the overcoming of traditional notions of periphery and center in the discipline of art history. 

 
Vera-Simone Schulz is PI of the international research project “Material Migrations: Mamluk Metalwork across Afro-Eurasia”, funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation (together with Gertrude Aba Mansah Eyifa-Dzidzienyo) with four doctoral and postdoctoral fellows based in Ghana, Nigeria, and Ethiopia and co-convener of the online lecture series “Material Migrations”.  
She is PI of the international research project “Epistemologies of Conviviality: Temporalities and Aesthetics of the Built Environment across the Horn of Africa and Beyond” funded by the Volkswagen Foundation (together with Elyas Abdulahi and Akram Elkhalifa) that includes the organization of summer schools in Somalia (online), Eritrea and Ethiopia (in person), the hybrid workshop series “Decentering Italian Colonial Heritage in Africa” and the online lecture series “Ecologies, Collections, and Contested Heritage: The (Un-)Natural History of Italian Colonialism in Africa” (together with Jermay Michael Gabriel).  

 
In 2022, she was co-PI of the international research project “The Ecology of Ceramics in Coastal Architectural Heritage” in collaboration with Soumyen Bandyopadhyay, funded by the HSS Faculty Research Development Fund of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Liverpool. Her research has been supported by fellowships of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut (KHI), the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) Vienna, the Bard Graduate Center in New York City, the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, and by a residency at the Warburg Institute in London, among others. She was a fellow of the MuseumsLab program, funded by the German Minister of State for Culture and the Media (BKM) and the Federal Foreign Office (AA) on the future of museums in Africa and Europe and is a MuseumsLab Alumna. 

 

In 2022, she was CIRN Intesa Sanpaolo Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, where she was also a postdoctoral fellow at Wolfson College, and organized the international symposium “Between the Black Mediterranean and the Black Atlantic: Complexifying Stories of Connectivity and Resistance” at CRASSH and Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge in May 2022. 

 

Vera-Simone Schulz is academic coordinator of Black Archive Alliance at the Recovery Plan (in collaboration with Justin Randolph Thompson), co-convener of “Plants in Africa and Planetary Entanglements: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)” at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine (together with Jacques Aymeric and Abidemi Babatunde Babalola) and co-founder and co-convener of “Planetary Patchwork: A Perpetual Seminar on Artistic Practices, Heritage, and Epistemologies” (together with Evi Olde Rikkert and Nicole Remus). 

Projects

  1. Material Migrations: Mamluk Metalwork across Afro-Eurasia
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Project manager, academic) , Gertrude Aba Mansah Eyifa-Dzidzienyo (Project manager, academic) , Raymond Silverman (Partner)

    Project: Research

  2. Ecologies, Collections, and Contested Heritage: (Un-)Natural History and Italian Colonial Ambitions in Africa
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Project manager, academic) , Jermay Michael Gabriel (Project manager, academic)

    Project: Scientific event

  3. Decentering Italian Colonial Heritage
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Project manager, academic) , Jermay Michael Gabriel (Project manager, academic)

    Project: Scientific event

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Publications

Journal contributions

  1. Ecologies of Recovery: Mónica de Miranda’s As If the World Had No West
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Author) , 15.06.2025 , in: Art Review Oxford, 2025, 12 , p. 31–37

    Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research

  2. From the Global Renaissance to ‘New Relational Ethics’: Early Modern African Artifacts in European Museums and Matters of Restitution
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Author) , 01.01.2024 , in: Africa e Mediterraneo, 100 , p. 50–57

    Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

  3. Archives, Architecture, and Critical Fabulation: Photography, Diapositives, and Questions of Heritage in the Work of Georges Senga
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Author) , 01.01.2023 , in: Cambridge Journal for Visual Culture, 2 , p. 35–43

    Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research

  4. Ecologies of things and texts: Nature, matter, and material culture in the Middle Ages
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Author) , Shirin A. Khanmohamadi (Author) , 01.06.2022 , in: Postmedieval, 13, 1-2 , p. 163-166 , 4 p.

    Research output: Journal contributions › Other (editorial matter etc.) › Research

  5. “Potentially the Pompeii of East Africa”: Histories of Archaeology, Colonialism, and Tourism in Swahili Stone Towns in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Author) , 01.09.2021 , in: History of Humanities, 6, 2 , p. 427-448 , 22 p.

    Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review

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Contributions to collected editions/anthologies

  1. Decentering the renaissance: Afro-Eurasian Itineraries of Mamluk metalwork
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Author) , 22.01.2024 , p. 190-206 , 17 p.

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Chapter › Research › peer-review

  2. A Carpet between K(C)ongo and the Moon: Planetary Notions of Ornament
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Author) , 01.01.2022 Milan: Giunti , p. 40–49

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Research

  3. Coral Stone Mosques in Coastal East Africa
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Author) , 01.01.2022 Turnhout , p. 212–227 , 16 p.

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Research

  4. Transkulturelle Objektgeschichten: Islamische Artefakte in europäischen Kirchenschätzen und über diese hinaus
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Author) , 01.01.2022 Hildesheim , p. 47–54

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Transfer

  5. Entangled Identities: Textiles and the Art and Architecture of the Apennine Peninsula in a Trans-Mediterranean Perspective
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Author) , 03.07.2020 Turnhout , p. 119–154 , 36 p.

    Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Article in conference proceedings › Research › peer-review

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Activities

  1. Ecologies of Recovery: Complexifying Notions of Connectivity and Resistance in a More-Than-Human World
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Speaker)

    Activity: Conference Presentations › Research

  2. Beyond Notions of Periphery and Center: Mamluk Metalwork across Afro-Eurasia
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Speaker)

    Activity: talk or presentation in privat or public events › Research

  3. Material Ecologies: Architecture, Objects, and Ornamentation along the East African Coast
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Speaker)

    Activity: Conference Presentations › Research

  4. Between Siena and the Swahili Coast: Afro-Eurasian Entanglements and Artistic Dynamics
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Speaker)

    Activity: Conference Presentations › Research

  5. Black Archive Alliance: Epistemologies of Absence and Presence
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Speaker)

    Activity: talk or presentation in privat or public events › Research

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Prizes

  1. Fellow of the TheMuseumsLab
    Vera-Simone Schulz (Recipient) ,

    Prize: external Prizes, scholarships, distinctions, appointments › Research

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Teaching