Barbara Baert teaches in the fields of iconology, art theory and analysis, and medieval art. She is the founder of the Iconology Research Group, an international and interdisciplinary platform for the study of the interpretation of images. Baert is a fellow at Illuminare – Centre for the Study of Medieval Art. In 1997, Baert obtained a doctoral degree with her research on the True Cross, later published in English under the title A Heritage of Holy Wood: The Legend of the True Cross in Text and Image. She directed several international research programmes, such as Mary Magdalene and the Touching of Jesus, an intra- and interdisciplinary investigation of the interpretation of John 20:17 sponsored by the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders and The Woman with the Hemorrhage, an iconological study of the interpretation of the Haemorrhoissa in medieval art funded by the KU Leuven. Currently, Baert is supervising a project entitled Caput Iohannis in Disco. Object-Medium-Function. Since January 2014 she has been a life member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts. She is also a member of the Academia Europaea. Between April and September 2015, she held a fellowship at the Internationale Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie. As coordinator of the Iconology Research Group, Baert is the editor-in-chief of three peer-reviewed series: Iconologies, Studies in Iconology, and Art & Religion.
Prizes and awards
Baert was honoured twice by the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts: in 1993 for her outstanding thesis in art history entitled Het Boec van den Houte and in 2006 for her outstanding scientific career before the age of forty. In 2016, she was honoured the and the Francqui Prize for her pioneering work in iconology and medieval visual culture.
B. Baert, "The Gaze in the Garden. Noli me tangere and embodiment in the 15th century Netherlands and Rhineland", in Body and Embodiment. Nederlands kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 2007, pp. 37–61.
B. Baert, "Touching the Hem. The Thread between Garment and Blood in the Story of the Woman with the Hemorrhage ", in Das Kleid der Bilder, eds. Marius Rimmele & David Ganz, Konstanz-Zürich, 2012, pp. 159–182.
B. Baert, Interspaces between Word, Gaze and Touch. The Bible and the Visual Medium in the Middle Ages. Collected essays on Noli me tangere, the Woman with the Haemorrhage, the Head of John the Baptist, Leuven: Peeters, 2011.
B. Baert, Caput Joannis in Disco. Essay on a Man’s Head, Leiden: Brill, 2012.
B. Baert, L. Kusters and E. Sidgwick, "An issue of blood. The healing of the woman with the Haemorrhage in early medieval visual culture", in Blood, Sweat and Tears - The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe, ed. M. Horstmanshoff, Leiden: Brill, 2012, pp. 307–338.
B. Baert, "Adam, Seth and Jerusalem. The Legend of the Wood of the Cross in Medieval Literature and Iconography", in Adam, le premier home, Firenze, 2012, pp. 69–99.
B. Baert, Ann-Sophie Lehmann & Jenke van der Akkerveken, New Perspectives in Iconology: Visual Studies and Anthropology Brussels, 2012.
B. Baert, "The Johannesschüssel as Andachtsbild. The Gaze, the Medium and the Senses", in Disembodied Heads in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, ed. Catrien Santing, B. Baert & Anita Traninger, Leiden: Brill, 2013, pp. 117–160.
B. Baert, Late Mediaeval Enclosed Gardens of the Low Countries: Contributions to Gender and Artistic Expression, Leuven: Peeters, 2015.
B. Baert, Pneuma and the Visual arts in the Middle Ages and early Modernity, Leuven-Walpole, 2016.
B. Baert, "Pentecost and the Senses. A Hermeneutical Contribution to the Visual Medium and the Sensorium in Early Medieval Manuscript Tradition", in Preaching after Easter, eds. Johan Leemans & Rich Bishop, Leiden: Brill, 2016, pp. 346–370.
B. Baert, Kairos or Occasion as Paradigm in the Visual Medium. Nachleben, Iconography, Hermeneutics Leuven: Peeters, 2016.
