Dr Meekyung MacMurdie

Meekyung MacMurdie is Assistant Professor in Art History at the University of Utah, where she is also affiliated with the Middle East Center. MacMurdie is a historian of premodern Islamic visual and material culture, with a special interest in the intersection of philosophy and artistic process. She is currently at work on a book titled Geometric Medicine: art, knowledge, and the grid in the medieval Islamic world. The book explores how the grid–in manuscripts, on healing objects, and within the urban hospital space)–bridged theoretical and practical medicine, bringing into conversation strata of physicians, patients, and artisans across the medieval Islamic world.

MacMurdie received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2020. Before joining the University of Utah, she was a fellow with the ERC-funded project Globale Horizonte in der Kunst des Mittelalters at Universität Bern (2018–2021). Her research has also been supported by the Mellon Foundation.