Biography
Dr Cecily Hennessy is the Academic Director of Christie’s Education, London. Previously, Cecily was the Director of Studies and prior to that the Programme Director for Art and Collecting: Antiquity to Renaissance degree programme. She received her PhD from the Courtauld Institute in 2001, and she subsequently worked at the Courtauld as Head of Short Courses and Adult Learning before joining Christie's Education in 2006.
Cecily has published Images of Children in Byzantium in 2008 followed by a guide to the paintings in Cappadocia in 2013 and several articles on children, adolescence and the family in Byzantium, on middle and late Byzantine manuscripts, and on the topography and paintings of Constantinople, Ravenna and Jerusalem. She is currently finishing a short guide to medieval Rome.
Publications & Exhibitions
Books
Early Christian and Medieval Rome: A Guide to the Art and Architecture, 2017
Articles/Publications
Early Christian and Medieval Rome: A guide to the art and architecture, 2017
Images of Children in Byzantium, Ashgate, 2008, issued as paperback and kindle edition, 2017
‘Representations and Roles of Adolescence with a Focus on Apocryphal Imagery’, in Coming of Age. Adolescence and Society in Byzantium, Millenium Studies, Despoina Ariantzi (ed.), Berlin, 2017
‘The Vatican Epithalamion’, in A Companion to Byzantine Illustrated Manuscripts, ed. V. Tsamakda, Leiden, 2017
‘The Theodore Psalter and the Rebuilding of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem’, Electronic British Library Journal, 2017, study 4
‘Saint James the Just: Sacral Topography in Jerusalem and Constantinople’, in Tomb and Temple: Reimagining the Sacred Buildings of Jerusalem, Eric Fernie and Robin Griffith-Jones (eds.), Woodbridge, 2018
‘Architecture/Spolia’, in The Cambridge Handbook to Byzantine Archaeology, M. Decker (ed.), forthcoming 2018
‘No Lilies of the Field: Byzantine Children at Work’, in Peasants and Poverty in Byzantium, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2019
‘Winchester’s Holy Sepulchre Chapel and Byzantium: Iconographic Transregionalism?’, in The Regional and Transregional in Romanesque Art and Architecture, British Archaeological Association, forthcoming 2019
Papers and Essays:
‘Mary Magdalene: East is East and West is West?’, Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies Spring Symposium, University of Birmingham, March 2017
‘No Lilies of the Field: Byzantine Children at Work’, Leeds International Medieval Congress, July 2017
‘Mary Magdalene in Byzantium’, Murray Seminar, Birkbeck, November 2017
‘Winchester’s Holy Sepulchre Chapel and Byzantium: Iconographic Transregionalism?’, British Archaeological Association, International Romanesque Conference, Poitiers, April 2018
‘Mary Magdalene: Collateral currents in empire and image making in the thirteenth century’, ICMA sponsored session, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 2018
Co-convenor with V. Chagnon-Burke, Celebrating Female Agency in the Arts, two day conference, New York, June 2018
‘Winchester’s Holy Sepulchre Chapel and Byzantium’, London Art History Society, October 2018
‘Byzantine influence in Winchester Cathedral?’ University of Birmingham Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies seminar, November 2018
‘Mary Magdalene, Marginalized and Demarginalized’ Marginalization and subculture groups: Prostitutes, actors, and tavern-keepers in Byzantium, Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, University of Vienna, May 2019
Selected Recent Lectures & Courses:
‘Children, Adolescents, Books and Learning in Byzantium,’ in seminar series, Perspectives on Education from the Ancient and Medieval Mediterranean, Cambridge University, June 2019
‘Women Builders: Convents in Constantinople’, Women and Architecture in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, Society of Architectural Historians conference, Seattle, June 2020
'Otto III and the Widow Theophanu: A Greek Court in the West?', British Archaeological Association, International Romanesque Conference, Romanesque and the Year 1000, Hildesheim, April 2020
‘Constantinople and Winchester, Manuel II and Henry the Lion, the Lithos and the Lamentation’, Byzantine Studies Conference, Madison, Wisconsin, October 2019
‘Children, Adolescents, Books and Learning in Byzantium,’ in seminar series, Perspectives on Education from the Ancient and Medieval Mediterranean, Cambridge University, June 2019
‘Mary Magdalene, Marginalized and Demarginalized’, Marginalization and subculture groups: Prostitutes, actors, and tavern-keepers in Byzantium Conference, Institut für Byzantinistik und Neogräzistik, University of Vienna, May 2019
Co-convenor with V. Chagnon-Burke and S. Mao, The Chinese Art Market, two day conference, Hong Kong, November 2020
