Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities
"La Capraia"
Research Residencies

Photo: Claudio Metallo

Research Residencies

Each year, the Advisory Group of the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities “La Capraia” invites applications for Research Residencies for PhD students in the earlier stages of their dissertations. Projects may focus on art and architectural history, music history, archeology, the digital humanities, or related fields, from antiquity to the present. Projects should address the cultural histories of Naples and southern Italy as a center of exchange, encounter, and transformation, and, most importantly, make meaningful use of local research materials including artworks, sites, archives, and libraries.

Research Residencies run for the academic year (mid-September to early June). Research Residents are awarded free lodging and work space at La Capraia as well as a modest stipend, administered by Amici di Capodimonte, to help defray the cost of living. Research Residents are granted privileged access to collections and research resources at Capodimonte, and access to other sites, collections, and research materials are arranged as needed. During their time in Naples, Research Residents are expected to work on their projects full time and in residence, and to participate in the organized activities, scholarly programs, and intellectual life of the Center. Research Residents are invited to present their research in an informal seminar, gallery talk, or site visit in the spring semester. In the summer following the residency period, Research Residents are invited to contribute a short essay to the Center’s annual research report.

Apply for a Research Residency

Download the call for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Research Residents Claire Jensen (2019-2020) and Michela Perrotta (2023-2024) are happy to share with you their experiences of life at La Capraia.



Photo: Claudio Metallo

Research Residents and Affiliated Researchers (2024-2025)

Eilis Livia Coughlin
Doctoral Candidate, Rice University
Predoctoral Research Resident
The Bible of Naples (Paris, BnF, Ms. français 9561): Female Power, Piety, and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Angevin Naples

Agnieszka Anna Ficek
The Custard Institute for Spanish Art and Culture / The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History
Affiliated Postdoctoral Researcher
Royal Power, Exoticism, and Technology: Porcelain Rooms from Naples to Madrid

Margherita Giugni
Doctoral Candidate, Università di Roma “La Sapienza” / Istituto di Scienze del Patrimonio Culturale
Affiliated Predoctoral Researcher
SHARING Scientific Humanistic ARt collection INvestiGation

Jennifer Gómez Esquinas
Doctoral Candidate, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Predoctoral Research Resident
Sulle orme di Cariteo a Napoli tra archivi e biblioteche: dal Regno aragonese al Vicereame spagnolo

Catherine C. Heemann
Doctoral Candidate, University of Texas, Austin
Predoctoral Research Resident
Music theory and literary writings in a pedagogical context in the Middle Ages

Orazio Lovino
Doctoral Candidate, Università di Firenze, Pisa, Siena, in co-tutelle with University of Amsterdam
Predoctoral Research Resident
La pala d’altare nel Regno di Napoli (1443-1530)


Research Residents and Affiliated Researchers (2023-2024)

Marian Berthoud
Doctoral Candidate, Temple University
Predoctoral Research Resident
Ruined and Rebuilt: Constructing the Ideal Baroque City after Natural Disasters

Şirin Datli
Doctoral Candidate, Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf
Predoctoral Research Resident
The Neapolitan Collection of Giuseppe Valletta: Art, Artefacts, and their Epistemic Functions at the Crossroads of Knowledge around 1700

Michela Perrotta
Doctoral Candidate, Università degli Studi della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli"
Predoctoral Research Resident
Reconstructing the history of Renaissance libraries in the Kingdom of Naples: the illuminated book collection of Antonello Petrucci († 1487)

Gioele Scordella
Doctoral Candidate, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Predoctoral Research Resident
Art and Ritual: Processional Sculpture in Spanish Naples (1550-1700)

Agnieszka Anna Ficek
The Custard Institute for Spanish Art and Culture / The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History
Affiliated Postdoctoral Researcher
Royal Power, Exoticism, and Technology: Porcelain Rooms from Naples to Madrid

Carmine Romano
Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte
Affiliated Postdoctoral Researcher
Digitizing the collections of the Museo di Capodimonte


Summer Study Residencies / O’Donnell Institute Master’s Program in Art History (Summer 2023)

Jacqueline Haefner
MA Candidate, The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas

Karlyn Lienhard
MA Candidate, The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas

Katie Strand
MA Candidate, The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas

Ryan Tidwell
MA Candidate, The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas


Research Residents and Affiliated Researchers (2022-2023)

Jade Marie d’Avigneau
Doctoral Candidate, University of Lausanne
Predoctoral Research Resident
Fama et familia: Funerary culture and the construction of family identity in Early Modern Naples (c. 1470-1530)

Clara Baudet / Compton Verney Art Gallery & Park
Doctoral Candidate, University of Oxford
Predoctoral Research Resident (Fall 2022)
Sensing Naples, research in connection with the reinstallation of the Naples Collection at Compton Verney Art Gallery & Park

Gabriella Johnson
Doctoral Candidate, University of Delaware
Predoctoral Research Resident
Galatea’s Realm: The Art of Coral, Shells, and Marine Fossils in Early Modern Sicily, Naples, and the Maltese Islands

Nora Lambert
University of Chicago / Kress Foundation Institutional Fellow, Bibliotheca Hertziana
Affiliated Predoctoral Researcher
Picturing Mobility: Late Medieval and Renaissance Naples at the Threshold of the Mediterranean

Michela Perotta
Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”
Predoctoral Research Resident (Spring 2022)
Research in Capodimonte collections for the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database Project

Domenico Pino
Doctoral Candidate, University College London
Predoctoral Research Resident
Printmaking in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (1734–1799)

Carmine Romano
Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte
Affiliated Postdoctoral Researcher
Digitizing the collections of the Museo di Capodimonte


Research Residents and Affiliated Researchers (2021-2022)

Jacob Eisensmith
University of Pittsburgh
Research Resident
Renaissance Italy in Mediterranean Networks: The Impact of Islam on Italian Identity

Nora Lambert
University of Chicago / Fulbright Fellow
Affiliated Predoctoral Researcher
Picturing Mobility: Late Medieval and Renaissance Naples at the Threshold of the Mediterranean

Josephine Neil
Affiliated Postdoctoral Researcher
The Incomprehensible Divine in Caravaggesque Painting

Carmine Romano
Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte
Affiliated Postdoctoral Researcher
Digitizing the collections of the Museo di Capodimonte

Crystal Rosenthal
The University of Texas at Austin
Research Resident
Agents on the Shore: Freestanding Arches in Roman Port Cities


Research Residents and Affiliated Researchers (2020 - 2021)*

Jacob Eisensmith
University of Pittsburgh
Research Resident
Renaissance Italy in Mediterranean Networks: The Impact of Islam on Italian Identity

Carmine Romano
Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte
Affiliated Postdoctoral Researcher
Digitizing the collections of the Museo di Capodimonte

Crystal Rosenthal
The University of Texas at Austin
Research Resident
Agents on the Shore: Freestanding Arches in Roman Port Cities

Dr. Edward Payne
Aarhus Universitet
Affiliated Postdoctoral Researcher
Visualizing Violence in the Early Modern Spanish Port City

Gianluca Puccio
Università degli Studi della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli"
Affiliated Predoctoral Researcher
The Digital Catalogue of the Bourbon Collection of Drawings at Capodimonte

*Research Residents and Affiliated Researchers will be on site in Naples beginning in Fall 2021, when we reopen the physical doors of the Center.


Research Residents and Affiliated Researchers (2019 - 2020)

Claire Jensen
University of Toronto
The Art of Annunziata: A hospital church in Sant’Agata de’ Goti

Lisa Malberg
Ruhr University Bochum
Theatine Churches in Naples and Rome: Sacred space between religious identity and local self-assertion in the age of Counter-Reformation

Diana Mellon
Columbia University
Health, Bathing, and Site-specificity in the Illuminated De balneis Puteolanis

Nathan K. Reeves
Northwestern University
Urban Space, Plebe Musicians, and Buon Governo in Spanish Naples, 1537-1632

Gianluca Puccio
Università degli Studi della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli"
Affiliated Predoctoral Researcher
The Digital Catalogue of the Bourbon Collection of Drawings at Capodimonte

Dr. des. Jennifer Rabe
Affiliated Postdoctoral Researcher
The Netherworld as Mirror: Technology and Religion in the Painting of Netherlandish painters between Florence, Naples,and Rome


Research Residents (2018 – 2019)

Fabrizio Ballabio
University of York
Measures of Security: Ferdinando Fuga’s Reali Granili and the politics of grain provision in eighteenth century Naples

Sara Berkowitz (Spring 2019)
University of Maryland at College Park
Ambiguous Bodies: Gender Non-Conformity and Bodily Transformation in Early Modern Italian Art

Elizabeth Duntemann
Temple University
Healing Rhetoric, Holy Wood, and Venereal Infection in Sixteenth-Century Italian Visual Culture

Justinne Lake-Jedzinak (Spring 2019)
Bryn Mawr College
Collecting Portraits of Early Christian Virgin Martyrs in Seicento Naples

Peter Michael Levins (Fall 2018)
Brown University
Fascism’s Adriatic Empire: Architecture and Cultural Politics in Italy’s Interwar Oltremare

Anatole Upart (Fall 2018)
University of Chicago
Slavic Rome: Constructing Foreign Communities in an Early Modern Italian City, 1450-1750