Jill Burke is Professor of Renaissance Visual and Material Cultures at the University of Edinburgh, and Director of the Edinburgh Historical Reconstruction Lab. She is a cultural and art historian, and occasional curator, with a research focus on the history of the body, its appearance and representation in the Renaissance world, especially Italy, c. 1400-1700.
Most recently she has become interested in how we can understand history through the body, using reconstruction and other hands-on techniques in teaching and research. She is currently investigating how manuscript and printed cosmetic recipe manuals can give us insights into early modern women’s lives.
She is the author of three books – How To Be A Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity (2023), The Italian Renaissance Nude (2018) and Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence (2004). She is editor/co-editor of the following: Art and Identity in Early Modern Rome (2008), Rethinking the High Renaissance (2012), The Renaissance Nude (2018), and Fatness in Early Modern Europe (forthcoming).
She has also written many articles and exhibition catalogue essays. She been on the curatorial team for exhibitions and installations at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (Edinburgh), the Royal Academy (London), the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles) and the Wellcome Collection (London).
