Laura Álvarez Acosta
holds a ma degree from the University of Zurich in Cultural Analysis and Art History in 2018. In her ma thesis, she dealt with the Mudéjar architecture of Sahagún, province of León, considering historiographic discourses and monument preservation policy in Spain. She obtained her ba degree in Ibero Cultura and Art History from the University of Freiburg in 2016. Her area of interests is national identity, cultural heritage and promoting Hispanic culture and language. She has been working in the snsf project Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe from 2018–2019.
Luis Araus Ballesteros
is a curator at the Museo de Burgos. He studied Medieval History and History of Art at the University of Valladolid, where he was a predoctoral researcher from 2014 to 2018. Subsequently, from 2018–2019, he worked in the Archivo de la Real Chancillería de Valladolid. The topic of his PhD thesis is the work of Muslims in Castilian architecture in late Middle Ages. He has been visiting researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for History, Culture and Societies of the University of Évora (Portugal) and the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies in Rome. His research focuses on the Muslim minority in Iberian kingdoms during the Middle Ages and artistic interchange between Mudéjars and Christian society.
Michael A. Conrad
was a research assistant for the project Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe at the University of Zurich, Institute of Art History, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Francine Giese. Before, he worked for the Collaborative Research Centre 980 “Episteme in Motion. Transfer of Knowledge from the Ancient World to the Early Modern Period” at Freie Universität Berlin, and at the Centre for Media and Interactivity (zmi) at Julius Liebig University Giessen. His doctoral thesis deals with the Book of Games (1284) by King Alfonso x of Castile and León and how it bases some of its core concepts on the idea of play as a model for decision-making. He currently teaches at the University of Zurich on behalf of the Kompetenzzentrum Zürcher Mediävistik at the University of Zurich.
is director of the Vitrocentre and the Vitromusée Romont. From 2014–2019 she held a snsf professorship at the Institute of Art History of the University of Zurich, where she led the research project Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe. Her habilitation (second book), dealing with building and restoration practices in the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, was published in 2016 (Peter Lang). In her current research project Luminosity of the East (SNSF, 2020-2024), she studies Islamic colored glass windows (qamarīya) within Western museum collections and critically questions their provenance and reception in 19th-century architecture. Her research focuses on the artistic heritage of al-Andalus, transfer and exchange processes between the Islamic World and the West, 19th-century collectorship, architectural Orientalism, and the arts of glass.
Alejandro Jiménez Hernández
is a graduate of the etsag (School of Architecture of the University of Granada). He has developed several projects which recreate buildings from Al-Alndalus, such as the decorations of Arab baths in different cities of Spain. In the last years, he has specialised in plasterwork with the Andalusian company Arabedeco, becoming one of the company’s masters of plasterwork. As such, he was involved in the recreation project for the Sala Orígenes at Toledo’s Army Museum, described in this volume. His academic and professional career also includes several projects of building restoration, interior design and new construction designs. He is currently working as a team leader in an international architecture office in Málaga, developing mostly luxury residential housing.
Katrin Kaufmann
works at the Department of Historic Preservation of the Canton of Berne and at the Vitrocentre Romont, where she focuses on Swiss stained glass of the 19th and 20th centuries. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Zurich. As an associated collaborator of the research project Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe between 2015 and 2019, Katrin Kaufmann wrote her dissertation Taking the Alhambra to St. Petersburg on neo-Moorish Russian architecture and interiors.
Sarah Keller
is a senior researcher at Vitrocentre Romont, where she deals with Swiss stained glass of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. As a specialist for the glazing, she was collaborating with the research project “Mudéjarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe” from 2014 to 2019. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Berne. Her dissertation thesis analyzed the transfer of Islamic elements to Romanesque architecture in Northern Spain.
is assistant professor at the department of Art History in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Prior to that, she has been postdoctoral fellow at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia in Madrid (2018–2019), and at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence (2015–2017), where she participated in the research project «Convivencia». Iberian to Global Dynamics (500–1750). Her research is devoted to patronage and transcultural artistic during the Late Middle Ages in the Iberian Peninsula. She is part of the Cost-Action 18129 Islamic Legacy. Narratives East, West, South North of the Mediterranean (1350–1750).
Ekaterina Savinova
received her PhD in Art History at the Academy of Arts of St. Petersburg, where she also pursued postgraduate studies. She is an art critic, research associate and curator of the architectural graphics and architectural models at the Museum of the Russian Academy of Arts, Saint-Petersburg. She is the author of nearly one hundred publications in Russia and abroad and has curated many international exhibitions.
Christian M. Schweizer
studied Art History and Musicology at the Universities of Zurich and Vienna. His master thesis «The Dream of India» – Architectonic Visions and their Political Instrumentalization during the British Raj discussed Islamic revival styles in the educational architecture of British India and the inherent political conditioning. 2016–2018, he was an associated fellow of the snsf project Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe. His research interests focus on the Islamic World, South and East Asia, especially on multi-directional transfer of culture and ideas, as well as on the instrumentalization of art and architecture in political narratives in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and its actors. He continues to read Indian Studies and Japanese at the University of Zurich.
Ariane Varela Braga
is Senior Lecturer in the History of Contemporary Art at the University of Geneva. Her PhD (2013, University of Neuchatel) was about Owen Jones and his theory of ornament (published 2017, Rome: Campisano). She has been a post-doc research assistant in the snsf project Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe at the University of Zurich (2014–2019). She is the author of monographs and collective volumes on ornament, Orientalism and colored marble and has collaborated with exhibitions in Brazil, Switzerland, Italy and Germany.