Ardeta Gjikola is a cultural historian of early modern science and she received her PhD in the History of Science from Harvard University. Her work focuses on relations between science and art, objectivity and subjectivity, and intercultural exchanges. In her current book project, “‘The Finest Things on Earth’: The Elgin Marbles and the Sciences of Taste,” she uses the aesthetic discovery of the Parthenon sculptures in the eighteenth century and their subsequent reception in Britain as a case study for exploring claims that aesthetic assessment could be a science. She examines, among other things, techniques for training the senses, processes of valuation and evaluation, and artistic and connoisseurial expertise. In a second project that arose from this work, as well as a long-standing interest in the Ottoman Empire, she looks at early modern Ottoman modalities of engagement with antique remains.

During the academic year 2021-2022, Gjikola will be a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles.