Biography

Meredith Cohen obtained her Ph.D. from Columbia University and joined the Department of Art History at UCLA in 2010 after having spent a decade conducting research and teaching at universities in England and France. She specializes in the art, architecture, and urban development of high medieval Europe (c. 1000 – c. 1450). Her research and teaching focus on issues concerning the social and ideological functions of art and architecture, production and reception, as well as historiography.

In 2010, she curated (with Xavier Dectot) an exhibition on medieval Paris at the Musée national du Moyen-Âge—Thermes de Cluny, titled Paris, ville rayonnante (“Paris, Rayonnant City”) (ed. RMN, 2010), and she remains a consultant for exhibitions in France at the Cluny and the Louvre-Lens. She has published articles on the Sainte-Chapelle in Speculum and Res. Other articles and book reviews have addressed medieval Paris, the “Court Style,” and French royal history. She has edited a series of interdisciplinary volumes on medieval history and culture, beginning with Difference and Identity in France and Medieval Francia (with Justine Firnhaber Baker) (Ashgate, 2010), followed by Memory in Medieval France (with Elma Brenner and Mary Franklin-Brown) (Ashgate, 2013), and Medieval Constructions of Space (with Fanny Madeline) (Ashgate, 2014). Her most recent book, a monograph entitled The Sainte-Chapelle and the Construction of Sacral Monarchy: Royal Architecture in Thirteenth-Century Paris was published by Cambridge University Press in 2015.

Her current research project, titled Paris Past and Present, aims to digitally reconstruct the lost monuments of medieval Paris in 3D, an enterprise that brings together undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral researchers as well as international collaborators. The team is currently completing an archaeologically accurate digital reconstruction of the lost thirteenth-century cloister, refectory, and lady chapel (built by the famous architect Pierre de Montreuil) from the abbey of Saint-Germain des Prés in Paris.