Claire Dillon

Claire studies the intersections of visual cultures, identities, and faiths in the medieval Mediterranean, focusing on textile arts from Sicily and their place in the historiography of the Global Middle Ages. 

Her research has been supported by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and Packard Humanities Institute. She recently received a Public Humanities Graduate Fellowship from the Society of Fellows/Heyman Center for her work on extremist appropriations of the Middle Ages, which has also won grants from the Medieval Academy of America, RaceB4Race, the Lehman Center Public History Project, and Columbia’s Department of History.

Claire is a Program Manager for Avinoam Shalem and Alina Payne’s “Black Mediterranean” Connecting Art Histories Initiative and Rapporteur of the Public Humanities University Seminar. She has also worked on digital humanities projects as a member of the NEH Immersive Global Middle Ages Institute and as a research assistant for the Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments project. Her commitment to art and advocacy includes serving organizations such as Amnesty International, UNESCO, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and ART WORKS Projects. She earned an M.Phil. from Trinity College Dublin as a Mitchell Scholar and received her B.A. in art history and Italian from Northwestern University, where she studied contemporary art as a Mellon Mays Fellow.