Pamela Mackenzie

Pamela Mackenzie, M.A., serves as a 4A_Lab Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, which operates as part of the Max Planck Society. She is concurrently completing her Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory.

Her research focuses on visual epistemology and representations of nature during the seventeenth century, particularly examining how emerging technologies of vision transformed human perception. Her dissertation, titled Microscope/Macrocosm: Early Modern Technology, Visualization and Representations of Nature, investigates botanical illustrations in Nehemiah Grew's Anatomy of Plants (1680), analyzing how early microscopic discoveries were visualized when language failed to describe newly observed phenomena.

• Technologies of Vision
• Scientific Illustrations
• Microscopy
• Representations of Nature
• Visual Epistemology

Her research explores how seventeenth-century scientific illustrations often resembled cartographic representations rather than traditional botanical drawings, suggesting how early microscopists conceptualized the microscopic world as a geographical space to be surveyed and conquered.

Awards and Recognition:

• Lisa Jardine grant recipient at the Royal Society of London (2019)

Research Support:
Her work receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and The Sansom Ideas Foundation. Previously, she held a predoctoral position with Sietske Fransen's research group Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History (2019-2021) and was a visiting researcher at Lincoln University's School of History and Heritage.

Research Environment:
As part of the 4A Laboratory: Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies, Aesthetics—a collaboration between the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz—Mackenzie works within a transdisciplinary research framework that connects art historical scholarship with contemporary debates on ecology, heritage, and digital transformation.