Centre for Visual Studies

Located within the Department of the History of Art, the Centre provides a working base for visiting post-doctoral researchers and an inter-disciplinary forum for members of the University.

The University of Oxford possesses an unrivalled range of expertise and resources relating to all aspects of visual culture, including important collections of art and artefacts from many periods and places, world-class research libraries, and scientific investigations into vision and perception. The purpose of the Centre is to encourage researchers to draw upon a wider range of such resources than is customary within the discipline of art history. Past and present visitors have, for example, conducted research into Renaissance theories of perception, the history of waxworks, nineteenth-century archaeological illustration, and linguistic theory and graphic design.