Appointment of PD Dr. habil.Angela Dressen as Honorary Professor of Art History and Digital Humanities

This year’s Institute Summer Festival brought together several joyful occasions: the traditional Winkelmann Lecture, the graduation ceremony—and, finally, a festive ceremony to confer an honorary professorship! For the past seven years, Dr. Angela Dressen, based in Florence where she conducts research at the Bibliotheca Berenson (Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies), has maintained close ties with our institute. She enriches university teaching with seminars and lectures that combine art historical research with digital methods. Dr. Dressen’s unique specialization is now receiving well-deserved recognition through her appointment as an honorary professor of art history and digital humanities.

In 2019, she successfully completed her habilitation thesis at the Technical University of Dresden and was appointed as a private lecturer. Angela Dressen’s research interests lie in the history of art and ideas during the Renaissance. She teaches these key topics not only at TU Dresden but also at several other educational institutions, including the universities of Jena and Vienna, and imparts digital skills for addressing art-historical questions. Both the art history department and the Master’s program in Digital Humanities at TU Dresden benefit from Dr. Dressen’s interdisciplinary approach. With computer-aided methods, the field of art history remains innovative and opens new approaches to already established areas of research. 

At the institute, she currently teaches a master’s seminar titled Cultural Heritage Data and Research Questions, in which she teaches students how to use the query language SPARQL and the programming language Python to generate art-historical datasets that can be used for empirical analysis. Last winter semester, she also led a block seminar titled Introduction to the Design of 3D Objects and Exhibitions in cooperation with the Meissen Porcelain Museum, which resulted in a VR exhibition titled Meissen Porcelain in Virtual Focus.

Her new title as Honorary Professor of Art History and Digital Humanities brings with it new projects and opportunities. The staff at the Institute for Art and Music Studies are delighted to welcome Angela Dressen as a researcher of international stature and wish her every success in her new role.