Sylvia Karastathi | HS12
Sylvia Karastathi studied Literature and Visual Culture at the University of Cambridge, where she trained in interdisciplinary research at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities as a member of the Intermedia Research Group. Her PhD Thesis examined the reception of feminist art criticism, in both its art-historical dimensions and its popularised mythologies, in the fiction of major late-20th century women writers. During 2011-2012 she was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the Institute of English Language and Literature of the University of Bern, where she worked on a project on ekphrasis and the novel. She has previously completed an MA in Modern Literature and Culture at the University of York and a BA in English Language and Literature in Thessaloniki (Aristotle University). In a different professional capacity, she has been training language teachers and teaching English, academic writing and study skills at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Research Project
During her fellowship at IASH Bern she plans to pursue a new strand of interdisciplinary research in the field of Literature and Museum Studies, focusing on museological and exhibition practices in contemporary British writing. The ‘Object-Based Narratives’ Project will investigate how museums and especially their education departments employ literature and creative writing; and how these practices can be illuminated by examining them in the context of contemporary literary output that also responds and engages with the cultural prominence of object-based narratives.
Research Interests
The nature of her work has always been interdisciplinary combining art history and visual culture theory with the study of the British novel. Her research interests extend from 20th and 21st Century Novel to Visual Culture Theory and Museum Studies, from Women’s Writing and the Art Novel to Ekphrasis and Intermediality.
