Dr Marta Ajmar

About

Marta is Associate Professor in History of Art and Director of Research and Impact. She joined the History of Art department at Warwick in 2023, following a career as research leader, curator and scholar at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Her research centres on artisanal culture, craft production and their local and global environmental dimensions in the Renaissance/Early Modern period, with a particular focus on ceramics, woodwork and lacquer. Her interests extend to contemporary making, regenerative design, human/more-than-human co-poiesis and experiential learning.

Marta’s museum experience includes extensive research leadership within the V&A Research Institute, where she developed interdisciplinary research projects and academic partnerships for V&A South Kensington and V&A East. She directed the research project, co-edited the book and co-curated the associated major exhibition At Home in Renaissance Italy (V&A 2006, shortlisted for AXA-Art Newspaper Exhibition Catalogue Award), funded by the Getty Foundation and the AHRC, which provided the blueprint for many permanent displays of the V&A's Medieval and Renaissance Galleries.

She is Co-chair of History of Art's Materials and the Environment research cluster and a member of the University of Warwick's Global History and Culture Centre and the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance. She is in the Leadership Team of the Business, Manufacturing and Innovation Spotlight (paused for 2025-26).

Her current interdisciplinary research collaborations include:

• Eutopia Connected Communities Reverse Engineering and Digital Imaging
• Regenerative Design and Craft Lab

Research interests

• Environmental histories of Renaissance/Early Modern craft
• Craft in the global Renaissance/Early Modern
• Histories of the domestic interior
• Histories of making and embodied knowing
• Histories and practices of regenerative design and craft
• Experiential pedagogies for higher education

Teaching and supervision

Modules taught include:

• Crafting the Global Early Modern
• Displaying the Renaissance
• Venice: Rise and Myth
• The Renaissance: North and South
• Art History and Its Methods

Current or recent PhD/M.Phil supervision includes:

• Mapping Incised Slipware in Northern Italy in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Perception, Production and Consumption
• The image of Cathay (China) in late Medieval/Early Renaissance Italy
• Pastorino and portrait medals in sixteenth-century Italy
• Early Modern paper technology in Italy and England
• Early Modern craft identity and guild communities
• Italian Renaissance domestic interiors
• Twentieth-century jewellery craft processes

I am particularly keen to hear from prospective PhD students who wish to research early modern histories of making and craft.

Selected publications

BOOK-LENGTH PUBLICATIONS

• Material Mimesis: Local and Global Connections in the Arts of the Italian Renaissance (monograph in preparation; Research supported by Leverhulme Research Fellowship)
• (ed.) Making and Hands-On Learning: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (UCL Press/V&A, forthcoming). (with Catherine Speight)
• (ed.) Approaching the Italian Renaissance Interior: Sources, Methodologies, Debates (Special Issue of Renaissance Studies, 20/5, 2006; re-published as book by Blackwell: Oxford, 2007). (with Flora Dennis and Ann Matchette)
• (ed.) At Home in Renaissance Italy (London: V&A Publications, 2006). (with Flora Dennis)
• (ed.), Approaches to Renaissance Consumption (Special Issue of The Journal of Design History, 15/4, 2002)

SELECTED ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

• ‘Paolo Veronese, Francesco Sansovino and Venetian Material Culture as Adynaton’, in Paolo Veronese, 1528-1588, eds. E.M. Dal Pozzolo and M.Falomir, Prado Museum, Madrid, 2025, pp. 224-41
• ‘Reciprocal Design in Italian Renaissance Wood Intarsia: Patterns, parasites and
  human/more-than-human making’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 03/2024, 87, 1, pp. 25-47
• ‘Looking into the transcultural object’, in EurAsian Matters: China, Europe and the Transcultural Object, 1600-1800, eds. M. Juneja and A. Grasskamp, Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context (Berlin: Springer, 2018), pp. 247-53
• ‘The Renaissance in material culture. Material mimesis as force and evidence of globalization’, in The Routledge Handbook of Globalization and Archaeology, ed. T. Hodos (Routledge: London and New York, 2016), pp. 669-86
• ‘Hot-drinking practices in the late Renaissance Italian household: a case study around an enigmatic pouring vessel in the premodern home’, in Conserving Health in Early Modern Culture, eds. S. Cavallo and T. Storey (Manchester University Press: Manchester, 2017), pp. 262-87
• ‘Mechanical Disegno’, RIHA Journal, Special Issue "When Art History Meets Design History", March 2014, http://www.riha-journal.org/articles/2014/2014-jan-mar/special-issue-art-design-history/ajmar-mechanical-disegno
• ‘The Global Renaissance: An Investigation of Cross-Cultural Objects in the Early Modern Period’, in Global Design History, eds. G.Adamson, G.Riello and S.Teasley (Routledge: London and New York, 2011), pp. 11-20. (with Luca Molà)
• ‘Geography and the Environment’, in A Cultural History of Childhood and Family (vol.3), eds. S. Cavallo and S.Evangelisti (Berg: Oxford, 2010), pp. 69-94
• ‘‘‘The spirit is ready, but the flesh is tired’’: erotic objects and marriage in early modern Italy’, in The Erotic Cultures of Renaissance Italy, ed. S. Matthews-Grieco (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2010), pp.141-69

Professional Associations

• AHRC Peer Review College (2006-2012 and 2020-)
• ICOM member
• Advisory Board Member and Contributing Scholar, The Making and Knowing Project, Columbia University (2014-)
• Faculty Member, British School at Rome (2012-18)
• Committee Member, Institute of Historical Research Mellon Fellowships for Art History (2010-2015)
• QAA Benchmarking Committee for the History of Art and Design (2006-07 and 2015-17)

Qualifications

• PhD in Cultural and Intellectual History, The Warburg Institute, University of London
• MA in Combined Historical Studies (The Renaissance), The Warburg Institute, University of London
• BA (Laurea) in Art History, Literary Studies and Classics (Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia), Università degli Studi, Pavia
• University Diploma in Chinese (Mandarin) Language and Culture, ISMEO, Milan/ Beijing Language and Culture University (北京语言文化大学)