History of Art and Architecture

Elena specializes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art and visual culture with a particular focus on women artists. Her current project explores Anna Tonelli’s life and work in Italy, Britain, and India, and asks what her career reveals about cultural exchange between Europe and its colonies. This project brings together her research interests in cosmopolitan sociability, colonial portraiture, and the relationship between literature and the visual arts in the long eighteenth century.

Before coming to Brown, Elena studied for a BA in English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, where she also earned an MA in English Literature (1700-1830), before moving to the University of Cambridge, where she completed a second MA in History of Art and Visual Culture. Alongside her studies, she worked as a gallery assistant at the Ashmolean Museum and an events assistant at the Fitzwilliam Museum.