Dr. Franca Buss
Visiting Scholar, Research Group Ethico-Aesthetics of the Visual
Franca Buss is a postdoctoral researcher in art history at the Universität Hamburg and a member of the CAS “Imaginaria of Force.” Her current research develops the concept of “energy landscapes” to investigate early modern landscapes as dynamic fields of natural, cultural, and aesthetic forces. She studied Art History, German Literature, and Philosophy at the Universität Hamburg, where she received her Ph.D. summa cum laude. Her dissertation on eighteenth-century funerary culture was awarded the Deubner Dissertation Prize by the German Association for Art History. Her research combines questions of landscape perception, aesthetic experience, bodily practices, and environmental forces. In 2026, she was a Gerda Henkel Foundation Visiting Scholar at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and received a Gerald D. Feldman Travel Grant from the Max Weber Foundation.
- Early Modern Art
- Landscape and Landscape Theory
- Environmental Art History / Environmental Humanities
- Aesthetics and History of Perception
- Art and the History of Science
- Eighteenth-Century Art
- Funerary Art and Cultures of Commemoration
- Art and Energy / Forces in Art
Oculos pascere. Landscape and the Metabolism of Vision


