Dr Tom Nickson

Office hours: Thursdays, 2-3pm. Please sign up for a slot here

My research and teaching fall broadly into two categories: Gothic art and architecture across Europe, and encounters between Christian, Islamic and Jewish traditions, especially in medieval Iberia. Many of these issues were addressed in my first book, Toledo Cathedral: Building Histories in Medieval Castile (2015), and I am now working on a new book, Architecture in Medieval Spain & Portugal: Seven Moments, which will explore architecture across the Iberian Peninsula (including Spain, Portugal and al-Andalus) from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. I am also interested in questions of architecture and light, and in technologies of reproduction in the 19th century – the focus of a forthcoming display in the Courtauld Gallery’s Project Space.

Teaching

MA:

‘Medieval Art and Architecture, 1066-1603: England and Beyond‘. Next taught in 2024/25.
‘Arts of Intimacy? Christians, Muslims and Jews in Medieval Spain’. Last taught in 2023/24
‘Gothic Encounters: Architecture and Emulation in the Middle Ages’. Last taught in 2014/15.

BA:

‘Power and Piety: Medieval Westminster’ (BA1)
‘Facsimile Debates: AI to Plato’ (BA2)
‘Art & Identities in Medieval Spain’ (BA3)

PhD Supervision

I welcome applications from prospective PhD students and advise you to contact me as early as possible in the application process (ideally before December, to begin the following October)

Current

Jamie Haskell, ‘The cloister of Pamplona Cathedral’ (due September 2022). Funded by CEEH.
Jane Stewart, ‘The monument to Sir James Hales (d. 1589) in Canterbury Cathedral’ (due September 2024).
Natalia Muñoz Rojas, ‘Women, new churches, and the conquest of Granada’ (due September 2025). Funded by CHASE
Sophia Dumoulin, ‘Westminster Abbey After the Plantagenets: Worship, Power, Destruction & Transformation, 1399-1603’
Ricardo Mandelbaum, ‘Ramon Lull’s Visual Culture: Intersections between Art, Architecture and Lullism in Catalonia, Paris, Montpellier and Mallorca in the late 13th and 14th centuries’

Completed

Costanza Beltrami, ‘Juan Guas and Gothic Architecture in Late Medieval Spain: Collaborations, Networks, Geographies’ (2020)
Maeve O’Donnell-Morales, ‘The Altar in Medieval Castile: a Social and Material History’ (2018)
Sophie Dentzer, ‘Decorative Vaults in Fourteenth-Century England’ (2016)
Matilde Grimaldi, ‘The Lost Romanesque Cathedral of Tortosa (Catalonia)’ (2016)

Research interests

The spread of Gothic architecture in medieval Europe and technologies of architectural transmission.
Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, especially Iberia and England.
19^th– and 20^th-century architectural criticism and revivalism.
The cult of Thomas Becket.
Church furnishings and inventories.
Epigraphy and orality in Christian and Islamic contexts.
The reception of Islamic art and architecture in medieval Europe.
Architecture and light.
Antiquarianism in Early Modern Spain and England.
Photography, plaster casts, and technologies of reproduction in the 19th century.

Lecture recordings:

Recent publications

Books and edited books

Gothic Architecture in Spain: Invention and Imitation, eds T. Nickson and N. Jennings, Courtauld Books Online, 2020.
The Cult of St Thomas Becket: Art. Relics and Liturgy in Britain and Europe, ed. T. Nickson. Special issue of the Journal of the British Archaeological Association (2020)
Toledo Cathedral: Building Histories in Medieval Castile. Penn State University Press, 2015.
‘Simulacra and Seriality: Spanish Renaissance Sculpture‘. Special issue of the Hispanic Research Journal, eds T. Nickson, M. Trusted and J. Schrader, 16: 5 (October 2015).
Picturing Kingship in Medieval Castile, eds T. Nickson and K. Donahue-Wallace. Special 2012 issue of the Hispanic Research Journal, with papers from a conference organised in York in July 2011.

Essays and articles

‘Towers, Travel, and Architectural Habits‘, in The Routledge Companion to the Global Renaissance, eds S. Campbell and S. Porras, Routledge, 2024.
‘Fernando III and Gothic Architecture‘, in El mundo de las catedrales: Pasado, presente y futuro. Actas del Congreso Internacional VIII Centenario Catedral de Burgos, ed. Carlos Izquierdo Yusta et al, 2022, pp. 653-661
‘The Parish Church Illuminated’, in Towards an Art History of the Parish Church, 1200-1399, ed. M. Bernstein, Courtauld Books Online, 2021.
‘Alfonso X’s patronage of Gothic Architecture‘, in Revista de Poetica Medieval, 2021
‘Describing Architecture in Thirteenth-Century Spain’, in Tributes to Paul Binski. Medieval Gothic: Art, Architecture & Ideas, ed. J. Luxford, 2021
Foreword to The Cult of St Thomas Becket: Art. Relics and Liturgy in Britain and Europe, ed. T. Nickson. Special issue of the Journal of the British Archaeological Association (2020)
‘Light, Canterbury, and the Cult of St Thomas’, in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 173 (2020), 78-99.
‘Gothic Architecture in Spain: Invention and Imitation’, introductory essay in Gothic Architecture in Spain: Invention and Imitation, eds T. Nickson and N. Jennings, Courtauld Books Online, 2020.
‘Size and Surveillance in Conquest Spain: The View from the Tower’, in Beauty and Persuasion in Medieval Art (special issue of Codex Aquilarensis, 35, 2019), 139-156.
‘Art of Medieval Iberia’, Oxford Bibliographies Online (2019).
(with Almudena Cros), ‘Constructing Pardon in Medieval Toledo’. Medieval Studies in Honour of Peter Linehan, eds F. Hernández, R. Sánchez Ameijeiras and E. Falque (2018), 493-522.
‘The Sound of Conversion in Medieval Iberia’. Resounding Images: Medieval Intersections of Art, Music, and Sound, eds S. Boynton and D. Reilly (2015), 91-107.
‘Remembering Fernando. Multi-lingual inscriptions in medieval Iberia’. Viewing Inscriptions in the Late Antique and Medieval World, ed. A. Eastmond (2015), 170-186.
‘Sovereignty Belongs to God: Text, Ornament and Magic in Christian and Islamic Seville‘, Art History 38: 5 (2015), 838-61.
‘Texts and Talismans in Medieval Castile’. Art in Translation 7: 1 (2015): 9-38
‘Copying Córdoba? Toledo and Beyond‘. The Medieval History Journal 15, no. 2 (2012): 319–354.
‘The First Murder: Picturing Polemic c. 1391‘. The Hebrew Bible in the Fifteenth Century: Exegesis, Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts, eds J. Decter and A. Prats (2012): 41–60.
‘Reframing the Bible: Genesis and Exodus on Toledo Cathedral’s Fourteenth-Century Choir Screen’. In Gesta 50, no. 1 (2011): 71–89.
‘Art and Belief in Medieval Castile’. Spiritual Temporalities in Late-Medieval Europe, ed. M. Foster (2010): 99–126.
‘La Catedral: su Historia Constructiva’. La Catedral Primada de Toledo, ed. R. Gonzálvez (2010): 148–161.
‘The Locked-Up Garden. Art and Nature in Medieval Castile’. Immediations 2, no. 2 (2009): 19–29.
‘The Royal Tombs of Santes Creus: Negotiating the Royal Image in Medieval Iberia‘. Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 72, no. 1 (2009): 1–14.
‘Moral Edification at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge‘. Architectural History 48 (2005): 49–68

Reviews

Jonathan Bloom, Architecture of the Islamic West: North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, 700-1800, in Hispanic Research Journal, 2022
Emanuele Lugli, The Making of Measure and the Promise of Sameness, in West 86th, 2022
Philippe Cordez, Treasure, Memory, Nature: Church Objects in the Middle Ages, in Burlington Magazine, 2022
Maile. S. Hutterer, Framing the Church: The Social and Artistic Power of Buttresses in French Gothic Architecture, in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2021
Thomas Becket: Murder and the Making of a Saint, British Museum, in Arts (2021)
Rose Walker, Art in Spain and Portugal from the Romans to the Early Middle Ages. Routes and Myths, in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 170, 2017, pp. 210-212.
Paul Binski, Gothic Wonder: Art, Artifice and the Decorated Style, 1290-1350, in Art History, 39: 1, 2016, pp. 152-155.
Jacqueline Jung, The Gothic Choir Screen, in The Medieval Journal, 14.1, 2014, pp. 139-141.
Pamela Patton, Art of Estrangement. Redefining Jews in Conquest Spain, in Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, 8.1, 2013.
Christabel Watson, The Romanesque Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela: A Reassessment, in Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 163, 2010, pp. 182-185.