Amelia Hutchinson
I am a PhD candidate in History, supervised by Professor Ulinka Rublack and funded by the Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholar Programme. My thesis looks at the relationship between health, medicine and materiality in early modern Germany. I focus specifically on how this played out in the microcosm of the curiosity cabinet.
My research centres around the art cabinets (Kunstschränke) produced by the merchant-dealer Philipp Hainhofer (1578 – 1647). It examines how artisans, merchants and collectors used material objects to understand their bodies. Furthermore, it attempts to understand how art-loving, mercantile, scholarly individuals such as Hainhofer constructed their relationships through the paradigms of health and the body. It argues that by focusing on the corporeal body, Hainhofer bridged geographical, confessional and social divides. I am particularly interested in sensory experience, employing a range of methodological techniques, such as material reconstruction, to reflect on how scholars can treat ephemeral materials.
I hold a MPhil degree in Early Modern History (2022) and a BA (Hons) in History (2020), both from the University of Cambridge. I am a 2023 Cambridge-Leibniz Museum Collection Fellow, working on a project entitled: Mining Landscapes, Production and the Body (c.1650-1800).
I am on research leave during Michaelmas Term 2023, but am available to supervise undergraduate students across Lent and Easter 2024.
My research interests include material culture, history of science and medicine, environmental history, sensory history and history of art.
I currently supervise final-year undergraduate students on Part II Paper 14, 'Material culture in the Early Modern World', and am teaching the 'Food and Drink' class for 2023/24. I am available to supervise undergraduate History students from Lent 2024
Upcoming papers:
DAAD Cambridge-Tübingen Exchange: Religion and Society in the Early Modern World (September 2024). ‘Art Objects as Mediators of Trans-confessionality: Philipp Hainhofer's Augsburg Cabinets, c.1610-40’.
Global Recipes Conference, Cambridge (May 2024). Title TBC.
Past papers:
Cabinet of Natural History, Cambridge (February 2024). 'Philipp Hainhofer's Pomeranian Cabinet'.
Herzog August Bibliothek (January 2024). 'Subtle Bodies: Networks and Corporeality in Philipp Hainhofer’s Material Community, c.1600-1650'.
DAAD Cambridge-Tübingen Exchange: Religion and Society in the Early Modern World (September 2023). ‘Health, Confession and Augsburg Cabinets of Curiosities’.
German History Society Annual Conference (September 2023). ‘Medicinal, Therapeutic and Embodied Materials in the Pomeranian Art Cabinet’
Religion, Emotion and the Body in Early Modern Europe Symposium (April 2023). ‘Emotive and Embodied Experiences in Philipp Hainhofer’s Art Cabinets’.
German History Society Annual Conference (September 2022). ‘Skin, Materials and Medicine in Northern Renaissance Art’.
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Key publications
Articles
‘Very full of details and excellently executed: Materiality and medicine in Hans Rottenhammer’s painted bodies’ - forthcoming with German History, 2024.