I am a professor of Renaissance visual and material cultures at the University of Edinburgh. I am a cultural and art historian and occasional curator, with a research focus on Renaissance Italy. I am interested in how human bodies (and the ways individuals think about, represent and modify their own and others' bodies) are affected by large-scale historical change. I am a 2008 Philip Leverhulme Prize winner.

I am currently also thinking about how we can understand history through the body, using reconstruction and other hands-on techniques in teaching and research. I am the author of three books: How To Be A Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity (2023), The Italian Renaissance Nude (2018) and Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence (2004).