We are delighted to welcome a new Fellow and an Academic Visitor to Balliol this Trinity Term:
John Chu (Keeper of Western Art, Garlick Fellow and Professorial Fellow) is an art historian whose research focuses on 18th-century British art and visual culture, particularly the work of Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. He also has developed a strong interest in how works of art are displayed and understood within historic houses, drawing on over a decade of experience with the National Trust. Alongside his academic research, he has curated exhibitions at sites including Osterley Park and Powis Castle and contributed to major exhibition catalogues and publications. He is also committed to public engagement, regularly contributing to television and radio programmes such as Hidden Treasure of the National Trust (BBC Two) and Fake or Fortune (BBC One).
Professor Elaine Treharne (Oliver Smithies Visiting Lecturer) specialises in British medieval manuscripts and Old English literature, with a particular focus on how manuscripts were produced, used, and understood. Her recent publications include Perceptions of Medieval Manuscripts: The Phenomenal Book (OUP, 2021); the Cambridge Companion to British Medieval Manuscripts (CUP, 2020); and Disrupting Categories, 1050–1250 (ARC, 2024). One project she is currently working on is Death of a Nun: Medieval Networks of Memory, which traces the networks of memory surrounding 13th-century mortuary rolls, and Manuscript Hunter: Neil Ripley Ker and the Heritage of British Books, 1930–1982, a study of the Oxford palaeographer Neil Ripley Ker and the scholars who documented and preserved medieval and early modern British books.