Katie’s art historical research centres on the ‘after lives’ of artists and ‘object biography’. She focuses in particular on the circulation, display and reception of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian art in the nineteenth century.
Katie gained a PhD in Art History from The Open University in March 2025 with her thesis titled ‘Giotto and Non-Giotto in Nineteenth-Century Britain’. Her thesis examines the display and reception of works misattributed to Giotto in Britain in the long nineteenth century. Scholarship addressing the reception of Giotto’s oeuvre tends to focus on the artist’s notable works in Italy. Katie’s thesis moves attention away from these to objects in British collections that were ascribed to Giotto in the nineteenth century and are now attributed to other artists. By overturning the usual emphasis on authorial authenticity, her thesis demonstrates the importance of misattributions for observing aesthetic bias, evaluating art-historical knowledge, and understanding social and political ideologies.
Katie’s doctoral research was supported by CHASE, the Consortium of the Humanities and Arts South-east England. Prior to that, she gained an MA in Art History with Distinction from the Open University in 2017. Her MA dissertation, titled ‘How did Ugolino di Nerio’s Santa Croce Polyptych challenge and change the art historical canon between 1780 and 1887?’, was runner-up in the Association for Art History’s post-graduate dissertation prize 2017.
Katie holds a post-graduate Diploma in Art Gallery and Museum Studies from the University of Manchester. She has worked for a number of art galleries and museums including Barbican Art Gallery and Royal Collections Trust. Her first degree was in Fine Art (Edinburgh University and College of Art, MA).
