Claire Dillon
Claire studies the intersections of visual cultures, identities, and faiths in the medieval Mediterranean. Her dissertation, Narratives of Entanglement: The Making of Medieval Sicily through Fragmented Silks and Societies, examines silk textile production in Sicily, involving hundreds of fragments attributed—or misattributed—to Muslim weavers working on the island. By critically examining the historiographies of this material, she considers how modern perceptions of diversity in the medieval Mediterranean have transformed over time. Her other projects investigate the afterlives of medieval Mediterraneanisms as manifest in modern extremisms, histories of fashion, and neomedieval monuments: her research on the Cathedral of Mogadishu was recently published in Speculum and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Drawing from her background in contemporary art, she is currently authoring essays on the work of Khaled Sabsabi for upcoming exhibitions and edited volumes.
Claire is the inaugural fellow of the International Interfaith Research Lab at Teachers College. Her research has also been supported by the 2025 Paul Mellon Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome in addition to fellowships and awards from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, SSRC-Mellon Mays, and Historians of Islamic Art Association, among other grantors, while her work on extremist appropriations of the Middle Ages has received grants and fellowships from the Medieval Academy of America and RaceB4Race, as well as Columbia’s Society of Fellows/Heyman Center, Lehman Center Public History Project, and Department of History. She has also been awarded scholarships for Arabic language study and participation in workshops and seminars with the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Harvard Art Museums, Dumbarton Oaks, National Endowment for the Humanities, Center for Curatorial Leadership, Textile Museum, Centre International d'Études des Textiles Anciens, Early Textiles Study Group, and Columbia’s Center for Science & Society.
She is the Program Manager of the “Black Mediterranean” Connecting Art Histories Initiative directed by Avinoam Shalem and Alina Payne, and was formerly Rapporteur of the Public Humanities University Seminar and a consultant and fellow at the Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning. Claire also contributed to 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, the United Nations Headquarters, UNESCO, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
She earned her M.Phil. in Medieval Language, Literature and Culture from Trinity College Dublin as a Mitchell Scholar, and a B.A. in art history and Italian from Northwestern University, where she studied contemporary art as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. Prior to her graduate studies, she was Director of Education and Outreach of the nonprofit ART WORKS Projects, where she developed and contributed to photography exhibitions, film productions, and educational programming across Europe, Africa, and the Americas to amplify diverse social justice issues in collaboration with local communities.
Recent publications:
“Confronting Once and Future Empire: Khaled Sabsabi’s Hip Hop Praxis.” In Arab Art and the Geography of Post-Imperialism, edited by Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi and Patrick M. Kane. Saqi Books, Forthcoming.
“Remembering the Normans in the South, from Somalia to Sicily: A Case Study in the Medieval Mediterranean’s Pasts, Presents, and Futures.” Speculum 101, no. 1 (2026): 14–20. https://doi.org/10.1086/738254.
“Transforming Cefalù in Mogadishu: The Arabo-Normanna Cathedral of Italian Somalia and the Façade of ‘Peaceful Conquest’.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 84, no. 3 (2025): 368–85. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2025.84.3.368.
“Charlotte Ickes & Claire Dillon on Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return.” zingmagazine (April 2025). https://zingmagazine.com/blog_posts/charlotte-ickes-claire-dillon-on-felix-gonzalez-torres-always-to-return/.
Dillon, Claire, Vikramaditya Joshi, and Amra Sabic-El-Rayess. “Addressing Extremist Abuses of Medieval Pasts: A Connection-First Approach to Narratives of Hate.” International Journal of Educational Development 111 (2024), article number 103160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2024.103160.