Cecilia Mazzocchio

Cecilia's doctoral project, funded by the SGSAH AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership, explores the impact of cross-cultural exchanges on Siena's artistic heritage, as well as the mobility of people, objects and knowledge between this Tuscan centre and the wider world, namely Mongol China, Ethiopia and the Eastern Mediterranean (1300-1492). Within this framework, Cecilia is particularly interested in how 'otherness' was understood and visualised by the Sienese community, in an age prior to the development of a European selfhood and distinctions based on 'race' or skin colour.