Melanie Ulz

Prof. Melanie Ulz is a Visiting Professor of Historical Image Studies at the University of Regensburg’s Faculty of Philosophy, Arts, History and Social Sciences. She has held visiting professorships at Bielefeld University (Gender Studies, 2021/22), Munich, Oldenburg, Zurich, and Heidelberg. From 2010-2016, she was a Junior Professor for Art History (18th–21st centuries) at the University of Osnabrück. Her research focuses on 18th–21st century art and cultural history, postcolonial and gender studies, transcultural object history, and migration visualization. She co-leads the DFG-funded project on 'Antigypsyism in Europe (1850-1950)'.

• Education: Doctorate (2005, University of Trier) on French history painting; postdoctoral work in Trier’s DFG Research Training Groups on Slavery and Media Studies.

Research interests include colonialism’s visual culture, museum practices, abolitionism’s imagery, and European history painting’s racial/gender constructs. Her monographs address Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign masculinity and Osnabrück’s architectural history. She edited volumes on migration visuality, slavery in art, and postcolonial museum studies.

Recent publications analyze colonial world’s fairs, migration exhibition design, and postcolonial art historiography. Her work interrogates how visual media construct colonial power, racial hierarchies, and transnational identities. Current projects examine antigypsyism’s visual narratives and migration’s transcultural museum representations.

Awards: None explicitly listed, but her extensive editorial and research leadership indicate significant academic recognition.

Advising/Grants: Supervised numerous collaborative projects; co-spokesperson of the Ulm Association’s migration art working group (2018-2020). Active in interdisciplinary migration/film research initiatives.

Labs/Teams: Collaborates in the DFG research group on Antigypsyism and the IMIS research network on migration visualization.