Ryan Eisenman

Ryan Eisenman is a PhD Candidate and the 2023–26 David E. Finley Fellow at The Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. Specializing in the visual and material culture of the European Middle Ages, Ryan’s research emphasizes the development of artistic communities and networks, the interplay of materials, techniques, and technologies, and the use of art in forming structures of power. His dissertation, “The Limoges Champlevé Enamel Industry, ca. 1180–1280,” illuminates the generation and reproduction of socio-economic relationships underpinning art-making in thirteenth-century Limoges, elucidating the working processes employed to make enamel “multiples” and tracking the taste for symbols of ecclesiastical authority made in champlevé enamel. He maintains an active interest in the application of contemporary queer theory to medieval art history. Ryan has held fellowships at the Barnes Foundation, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Rijksmuseum. From 2023–2025, he is a Membre associé at the Insitut des sciences sociales du politique at ENS Paris-Saclay. His research has been supported by the University of Pennsylvania, the International Center of Medieval Art, the Dr. Anton C.R. Dreesmann Fond/Rijksmuseum Fond, the Chateaubriand Program in Humanities & Social Sciences, and a Samuel H. Kress Foundation History of Art Grant.