The CEMS Member Spotlight is a new feature of our newsletter and website which aims to introduce individual members and their research to the CEMS community.

To set the Member Spotlights in motion, allow me to introduce myself, Dr Christina Clarke. I’m the new Executive Assistant for CEMS and ICCEMS (and editor of the CEMS website), and Honorary Lecturer at the ANU Centre for Art History and Art Theory. My expertise is in the history of metal material culture. I’m a trained gold- and silversmith, an art historian and a Classicist, and my work brings together archival and archaeological research with practice-based research.

I have a somewhat interdisciplinary background. My previous role was Lecturer in Early Modern Art, Design and Material Culture at the ANU Centre for Art History and Art Theory, but I have also worked in the Gallery sector in arts archives, conservation and curatorship, and as a jewellery-making teacher. My metalsmithing practice also bubbles along quietly on the side.

My research encompasses the history of metallurgy from its beginnings until the mid-20th century. I have published on the production of metal vessels in Bronze Age Crete and luxury silversmithing in Early Modern France, among other things, and I’m currently working on Arts and Crafts jewellery in Britain and Australia from 1880 to 1950. My recent publications include two articles on Louis XIV’s silver furniture (here and here), the outcome of a research fellowship I held at the Voltaire Foundation for Enlightenment Studies at Oxford, and an article on Louis XIV medals, co-authored with fellow CEMS member Assoc. Prof. Robert Wellington. I am also co-editor of a digital edition of Jean-Benjamin de Laborde’s 1773 illustrated songbook, Choix de chansons.

Please feel free to contact me about any CEMS or ICCEMS matters or queries at admin.cems@anu.edu.au or admin.iccems@anu.edu.au.