Laura Tillery
Assistant Professor of Art History
Laura Tillery is a specialist in medieval and early modern art. Her research concentrates on the manufacture and mobility of devotional art in northern Europe, especially in the Baltic and Scandinavia.
Her current book project, Art of the Hanse: The Mercantile Altarpiece from the Baltic Sea to the Arctic North, examines the craft, transport, and use of winged altarpieces along the mercantile routes of the Hanse trade network. She co-edited The Medieval Scandinavian Art Reader (Scandinavian Academic Press, 2023), which is the first anthology in English on Scandinavian art and architecture from the Vikings to the Reformation. Her other publications in progress focus on the multimedia altarpiece and its visual historiography, including a forthcoming article on intermedial workshop collaboration in Lübeck (in Gesta, Fall 2025).
Tillery teaches a diverse range of medieval and early modern courses in Art History and Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Her classes engage with object-based learning that use on-campus collections at the Wellin Museum of Art, Special Collections, and College Archives.
Recent Courses Taught
Visual Culture of the Medieval World
Intersections in Global Art
Northern Renaissance Art
Race and Racism in the Middle Ages
A World of Art (History)
Art without Borders
Distinctions
Wellin Museum of Art Innovation Grant 2022
Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2019-2021
Carl Zigrosser Fellowship, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2016-2017
Fulbright-Germany, 2015-2016
Select Publications
The Medieval Scandinavian Art Reader, contributor and co-editor with Margrethe C. Stang (Oslo: Scandinavian Academic Press, 2023)
“Late medieval multimedia and devotion,” in Reframing Art History, ed. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank (Smarthistory, The Center for Public Art History, 2022).
“Hanse Cultural Geography and Communal Identity in Late-Medieval City Views of Lübeck” Journal of Urban History (May 2020) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0096144220917933
Professional Affiliations
- College Art Association
- Historians of Netherlandish Art
- International Center of Medieval Art
- Medieval Academy of America
- Renaissance Society of America
Appointed to the Faculty
2021Educational Background
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
M.A., Tufts University
B.A., McGill University
