Jaqueline Sturm

Position
Ph.D., 2018
Role
Medieval
Bio/Description

Profile

Jaqueline Sturm’s research focuses on Mediterranean art and architecture during the Late Antique and Early Medieval period. She is particularly interested in the development and emergence of Christian art and architecture and its close relationship to Late Roman art throughout the empire. Her dissertation, entitled “The Bishop, His House, and His Church—Early Medieval Episcopal Complexes in Northern Italy (A.D. 300–600)”, contributes from an art and architecture historical viewpoint to the discussion currently led in a variety of historical disciplines concerned with the rise, function, and authority of the bishop. Her project focuses in particular on the architectural and artistic manifestations of authority and leadership of the spiritual and political leader in Late Antique and Early Medieval Mediterranean society and will examine a specific ensemble of buildings (cathedral, baptistery, and episcopium) that emerged in the Mediterranean during the rise of Christianity and that depended on the formation and development of the new office of the bishop.

Jaqueline received a M.A. in history and Christian archaeology in July 2009 from the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, where she wrote a master’s thesis on the Early Christian tetraconch church of Seleucia Pieria entitled “Die Tetrakonchenkirche von Seleukia Pieria—Baugeschichte und Funktion.” From the fall of 2012 until the summer of 2014, she conducted dissertation research as the Princeton Fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck-Institute for Art History in Rome, where she was employed as a regular fellow of the Max Planck Society until June 2015. She has presented papers at the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo and the annual Medieval Studies Graduate Student Conference at Princeton University, and has participated in interdisciplinary workshops in Late Antique and Byzantine history/art history in Princeton, Oxford, Paris, and Zurich. Most recently, she participated in an international conference focusing on the bishop and his palace held at Auckland Castle in Bishop Auckland, UK. In addition to presenting at conferences, she was also the co-organizer of the Department of Art and Archaeology’s 2011 graduate student conference, entitled “Drawing a Blank: Past and Presence.” Jaqueline is currently a graduate fellow at PIIRS, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, at Princeton University.