Merih Danali

Merih Danali is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at Wake Forest University, specializing in Byzantine and medieval European art with a focus on intersections between art and science. Her work examines cosmological diagrams, manuscript studies, and cross-cultural exchanges between Byzantium and the Islamic world (1260–1453).

• Education: M.A., Penn State University; Ph.D., Harvard University

Her current book project, Art, Science, and Religious Devotion in Fourteenth-Century Byzantium, analyzes cosmological illustrations in a 14th-century Greek miscellany (Marcianus Graecus 516), exploring how Christian philosophy, Pythagorean symbolism, and Platonic cosmology shaped its visual language.

Research support has been provided by Princeton University, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, and the University of Vienna’s Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies.

• Courses Taught: History of World Architecture, Byzantine Art and Architecture, Artistic Exchanges in the Mediterranean (500–1400), and Issues in Art History.