Alexandra Solovyev

Alex received her PhD in the History of Art from the University of Oxford in 2024. Her doctoral research focused on the visual and cultural histories of the British railways constructed in Ottoman Anatolia during the mid-to-late nineteenth century, combining histories of art with histories of technology, archaeology, and tourism. Prior to her doctorate, she completed her BA in Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University (2014-2018) and her MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture at Oxford (2018-2019). As the William St Clair Fellow, Alex will research the displacement of native inhabitants from ancient sites in the eastern Mediterranean, principally Ephesus, as they were turned into archaeological sites and subsequently tourist destinations, c. 1840-1880. Her broader research and teaching interests include the collection and reception of classical antiquities in Victorian Britain, Orientalism and Orientalist art, and British Levantine communities in the Ottoman Empire.