Sofia Hernandez

Bio/Description

Profile

Sofia Hernandez is a Ph.D. candidate studying early modern architecture under Professors Carolyn Yerkes and Basile Baudez. She is an architectural historian of the early modern Mediterranean, focusing on Italian architecture and urbanism. Her research investigates the relationship between architecture, political power, and natural disaster in early modern Sicily. Her dissertation focuses on the rebuilding of eastern Sicily after the earthquake of 1693, and the response of the Spanish Crown. More broadly, her research deals with cultural exchanges between Spain and Sicily throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Her further research interests include the travels of architects, earthquakes and natural disasters, the circulation and reception of prints and drawings, architectural ruins and spolia, and the historiography of baroque art and architecture.

Since 2023, Sofia has been a contributing author to The Digital Piranesi, a developing digital humanities project that aims to provide an enhanced online edition of the works of Italian illustrator, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778). Alongside a group of interdisciplinary and international scholars, Sofia is writing catalog entries for Piranesi’s views of Volume One of Le Antichità Romane. In 2021, Sofia received the President’s Fellowship for Graduate Studies. She received her B.A. in art history from Columbia University. Before Princeton, Sofia worked at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker in the healthcare group.

Field(s)
Early Modern Architecture