Dr Katrina Grant

Lecturer
Centre for Digital Humanities Research

Recent publications see http://katrinagrant.net/recent-publications/

Katrina Grant is an art historian and digital humanities expert with a background in the study of Early Modern Italy. Her research focuses on the history of gardens and landscapes in Early Modern Italy, the visual culture of performance in the same period, and, the application of digital technologies to art history (digital mapping in particular). Her research publications include articles and book chapters on the garden history of Italy, history of emotions and set design, the Arcadian Academy and landscape in Rome, and artistic relationships between Britain and Italy in the eighteenth century. Her monograph with Amsterdam University Press, Landscape in Early Modern Italy: Theatre Garden and Visual Culture (2022), explores how the idea of gardens as theatres emerged at the same time as opera was developed in Italian courts around the turn of the seventeenth century, and, how in this period the aesthetic of designed landscapes and gardens was wholly transformed, which resulted in a reconceptualization of the relationship between humans and nature. Current research projects include:

Digital Cartographies of the Roman Campagna. This project brings together historical maps with modern mapping technologies to recreate the lost landscape of the Roman Campagna, and draw together data and research from a variety of disciplines, including art and architectural history, social history, cultural geography and the history of climate and ecological change.

GLAM search engines and AI - this project, in collaboration with Bernardo Pereira Nunes from the ANU College of Computer Science and Engineering, examines the problems of bias and search engine design in large-scale digitised collections of art and culture.

Collaborative Projects and Digital Humanities Pedagogy - This project is driven by the research-led teaching of the Centre for Digital Humanities Research at the ANU and investigates new ways to engage interdisciplinary cohorts of students in the study of Digital Humanities and a critique of the digital world. We develop new pedagogical approaches to guide the development of Digital Humanities as a discipline, with a focus on public engagement and cultural heritage. This work builds on my background in educational research during my time as a Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research (2013-2016).

She is the founding editor of the Art History Network (formerly Melbourne Art Network website), run in collaboration with the Australia Institute of Art History. She has been on the executive of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ) since 2015.

Research interests

  • Digital art history
  • Digital mapping
  • Digitisation and cultural collections
  • Theatre and Festival Culture in Early Modern Europe
  • Set Design and Visual Culture of Theatre
  • History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes
  • History of Maps and Cartography
  • Baroque Art
  • Italian Art and Architectural History (16th-18th centuries)
  • Art Writing
  • Grand Tour and artistic relations between Britain and Italy
  • Court culture
  • Studies in place and space
  • Arcadias and Utopias
  • Grant, K 2023, 'The Princely Landscape as Stage: Early Modern Courts in Enchanted Gardens', in Stephen H. Whiteman (ed.), Landscape and Authority in the
    Early Modern World
    , University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, pp. 279-310.
  • Grant, K 2022, 'Performances of power - the site of public debate', in Placeholder Do not edit! Please contact publications.collection@anu.edu.au (ed.), RSD Books, Australian National University, Canberra, pp. 143-158.
  • Grant, K 2022, 'Performances of power – the site of public debate', in Shirley Leitch and Paul Pickering (ed.), Rethinking Social Media and Extremism, ANU Press, Canberra, pp. 143-158.
  • Leitch, S, Grant, K, Pickering, P et al. 2022, The net good of the net.
  • Grant, K 2019, 'The Bosco Parrasio as a site of pleasure and of sadness', Histoire culturelle de l'Europe, no. 3.
  • Beaven, L, Grant, K & Whitelaw, M 2018, 'Digital cartographies of the Roman Campagna', in Jennifer E. Boyle and Helen J. Burgess (ed.), The Routledge Research Companion to Digital Medieval Literature, Routledge, Oxford, UK, pp. 212-226.
  • Grant, K 2018, '"To Make Them Gaze in Wonder": Emotional Responses to Stage Scenery in Seventeenth-Century Opera', in Lisa Beaven and Angela Ndalianis (ed.), Emotion and the Seduction of the Senses, Baroque to Neo-Baroque, Medieval Institute publications, Western Michigan University, USA, pp. 79-98.
  • Grant, K 2011, 'Planting 'Italian Gusto' in a 'Gothick Country': The Influence of Filippo Juvarra on William Kent', in David R Marshall, Susan Russell and Karin Wolfe (ed.), Roma Britannica: Art Patronage and cultural exchange in Eighteenth Century Rome, The British School at Rome, London, pp. 225-240.
  • Grant, K 2011, ''Planting 'Italian Gusto' in 'a Gothick country': The influence of Filippo Juvarra on William Kent'', in David R. Marshall, Susan Russell, Karin Wolfe (ed.), Roma Britannica: Art Patronage and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century Rome, British School at Rome, London, pp. 225-239.
  • Grant, K 2007, 'Teatri di Verzura : Hedge Theatres in Baroque Lucca', Melbourne Art Journal (MAJ), no. 9 and 10, pp. 162-175.
  • Grant, K 2007, 'Gardens in Lucca', Place, vol. 1, pp. 1-18.