Recipients of the ARTES/CEEH Scholarships 2026–27
Two scholarships offered by ARTES with the support of the CEEH have been granted:
Aoife Stables, PhD candidate at the University College London – £3000
Picturing Purity, Weaponizing Womanhood: Art, Gender and Race in fifteenth-century Valencia
This project examines the ideological role of images of women in fifteenth-century Valencia. The city flourished artistically during this period and many new altarpieces were commissioned, dedicated to the Virgin Mary and female saints. Yet this ‘Golden Age’ was also marked by heightened tensions between Christians and their Converso, Muslim and West African communities. Using a premodern critical race framework, it explores how depictions of holy women linked femininity, purity, vulnerability, and Christian supremacy in ways that reinforced religious and racial exclusion. This scholarship will support a research visit to examine key comparative objects in Barcelona, Vic, and Castellón de la Plana.
Manuel «Saga» Sánchez García, postdoctoral researcher at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid – £3000
RomIA: Romanticist Imaginations of Andalusian Architectural History in John Murray Publisher’s Archive (1790-1900): Colonial Memories, Transhistorical Dimensions, and Echoes in Contemporary Culture
RomIA explores the architectural history of Andalusia and its reception in other European contexts through the rich archival material in the National Library of Scotland. The project focuses on the John Murray Publisher’s Archive, related to 19th-century writers of books on Spain such as Washington Irving, George Borrow, Richard Ford, and James Fergusson, who integrated Spain into a larger history of global architecture. RomIA interrogates the narratives on Andalusia’s architectural heritage that reverberate through their romantic and paternalistic eyes, filled by exotic stereotypes and charmed by past and present clashes whose mark is present still today in Spanish culture.
