Dr Emanuela Vai is a historian of Renaissance and Early Modern Italy, Europe and the Mediterranean world, and an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of musicology and material culture, art and architectural history, and the digital humanities. Dr Vai’s methodological approach combines the analysis of historical materials (from archives to the historic built environment) with digital humanities tools, such as 3D virtual modelling, GIS platforms, and acoustic analyses, to investigate the relationship between musical instruments, soundscapes, space, and the senses in early modern social life.
Dr Vai is the Head of Research (Humanities) and Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College | Hill Collection of Musical Instrument at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. In the Faculty of Music, Dr Vai leads on all conservation, research and curatorial aspects at the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments. Dr Vai is the founder and academic lead of the Digital Humanities and Sensory Heritage Network at TORCH, an interdisciplinary team of scholars exploring how digital humanities tools can be leveraged to reconsider heritage and the senses. Dr Vai is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and she is the Director in Humanities at AISUK, with the aim of promoting collaborations between British and European academic institutions and research centres, in the public and private cultural heritage sector.
Previously, she has held positions at the University of Cambridge; at the University of Oxford; at the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the University of York (CREMS); at the Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance de Tours (CESR); and at the Harvard Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti.
Dr Vai’s work has been funded by the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the EU Commission Horizon, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Renaissance Society of America, the Royal Musical Association, the École Pratique des Hautes Études, and the Newton Trust at the University of Cambridge, among others.
For enquiries about working with Dr Vai at postgraduate and postdoctoral level, please contact: emanuela.vai@worc.ox.ac.uk
Dr Vai’s publications focus on musical instruments, soundscapes, space and the senses in Renaissance social life. A full listed of publications can be found here.
Early Modern History; Music and Material Culture Studies; Digital Humanities; Musical instruments; Soundscapes, Space and the Senses in Renaissance social life; Art history, Architectural history and Music History.
Dr Vai is currently the Principal Investigator of an interdisciplinary research project entitled ‘Fantastic Musical Instruments of the Global Renaissance’ that combines digital humanities tools (3D photogrammetry, AR/VR) with material and archival analysis to examine the production, ornamentation, circulation, collection and display of early modern musical instruments. The project situates musical instruments within wider global constellations by tracing practices of decorating, making and collecting in the early modern period from a global perspective. The project is based at the Ashmolean Museum and the Bate Collection at Oxford and has been funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust and the EU Commission.
