Dr Yusen Yu

I came to Oxford in 2019, as the Junior Research Fellow in Comparative Aesthetics and Art History at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. I studied History, Persian Studies, and Islamic Art History in China, Iran, and the UK, and completed my PhD at Heidelberg University, Germany.

Research Interests

I specialize in the art and architecture of the Islamic world, medieval and early modern. This include the ‘Islamic’ reception of foreign objects. My current book project, entitled Chinese Scrolls and the Persianate Audience in the Long Fifteenth Century, examines the ways in which the scrolls were viewed and reused in Iran and Central Asia during 1350s and 1550s. Continuing this line of inquiry, I also investigate the afterlives of European prints, printed books, and printing technologies in Islamic book history.

Another strong interest is the cultural history of monies in medieval Islam, especially in Central Asia and the Indian Ocean world, both often described as the contact zones. My third area of research concerns the interrelationship between ecologies (animal, vegetable, and mineral) and aesthetic practices. In this field, I am currently preparing an article on the flora and fauna in the fifteenth-century Persian painting.