Lisandra (Lia) Costiner is an Assistant Professor in the History of Art. Her research focuses on late-medieval and early-modern visual culture, with an interest in digital methodologies. She trained in the History of Art at the University of Oxford (MSt and PhD) and in Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University (BA) and MIT. 

Her doctoral dissertation, currently being prepared for publication, traced the production, circulation, and illustration of a once popular, yet hitherto unstudied, Italian devotional text. Her current project explores the development of novel iconography and modes of representation in visual art in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. This research relies on cross-media analysis and brings together new textual, visual and material evidence. 

Over the years, Lia has held Post-Doctoral Fellowships at the Villa I Tatti, Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies, Florence, Italy (2022), and in the laboratories of Digital Humanities and Experimental Museology at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland (2017-2018). Between 2018 and 2021, she was a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, University of Oxford. In 2020-2021, she served as Stipendiary Lecturer in the History of Art at St. Peter's College and Worcester College, University of Oxford. 

Lia 's research has been supported by a number of prestigious grants including ones awarded by the Delmas Foundation, the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship, the Renaissance Society of America, the British Federation for Women Graduates, the Dutch Institute for the History of Art (NIKI) in Florence, the American Historical Association, the Medieval Association of America, and the UK Bibliographical Society, among others. 

In the field of digital humanities, Lia leads a number of collaborative projects that use computational techniques to analyse paintings and explore immersive ways of studying and engaging with cultural heritage. She currently leads two projects supported by the Netherlands eScience Center, and the NWO Open Competition XS.

While at Oxford, she founded and led the international (En)coding Heritage Network, and co-leads, the Oxford X-Reality Hub, the central point at the University of Oxford for project development, innovation and engagement with mixed reality technologies. At Utrecht University, Lia launched, together with members of the department, and collaboratively spearheads a similar initiative dedicated to the use of digital technologies for the study of art and culture, the Digital ArtLab. She is also a member of the Utrecht Young Academy.

Expressions of interest are welcome from BA/MA/PhD students attracted to any aspect of medieval/early-modern visual culture, or digital approaches.