Meekyung MacMurdie

Dr. Meekyung MacMurdie is an Assistant Professor in Art History at the University of Utah, where she maintains an additional affiliation with the Middle East Center. She concurrently serves as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, part of the Max Planck Society, which focuses on art historical research from transcultural and global perspectives.

MacMurdie earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2020. Prior to her position at the University of Utah, she held an ERC-funded fellowship with the project 'Globale Horizonte in der Kunst des Mittelalters' at Universität Bern from 2018 to 2021. Her scholarly work has received support from the Mellon Foundation, demonstrating significant recognition in her field.

As a historian of premodern Islamic visual and material culture, MacMurdie specializes in the intersection of philosophy and artistic process. Her research examines how visual forms and material objects functioned within knowledge systems of the medieval Islamic world. She is currently developing a book titled 'Geometric Medicine: art, knowledge, and the grid in the medieval Islamic world,' which investigates how grid systems in manuscripts, healing objects, and urban hospital spaces bridged theoretical and practical medicine across social strata.

• History of Islamic art and architecture
• History and philosophy of Islamic medicine
• Medieval manuscripts
• Historiography
• Diagrams, tables, and visual information technologies

MacMurdie's ERC-funded fellowship represents significant recognition of her scholarly potential. Her research approach combines art historical analysis with philosophical inquiry, medical history, and material culture studies, creating interdisciplinary connections that transcend traditional academic boundaries.

Her work brings together diverse perspectives from physicians, patients, and artisans across the medieval Islamic world, revealing how visual and spatial organization facilitated knowledge transmission. MacMurdie's position at both the University of Utah and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz positions her at the intersection of American and European academic traditions, fostering a truly global perspective on art historical research.