Christy Anderson (NHC Fellow, 2025–26)

Christy Anderson is a historian of architecture whose work bridges early modern Europe, global maritime history, and contemporary design. A professor in the Department of Art History and member of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, she is particularly interested in how architectural knowledge moves across cultures, materials, and environments. Her current book project explores the ship as an architectural type—examining how mobile spaces at sea have shaped cities, labor, and natural landscapes across the Atlantic world.

Anderson is the former editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin, where she championed scholarship that expanded the field’s boundaries in time, geography, and method. Her broader commitment to public-facing humanities includes collaborative digital platforms, podcasts, and curatorial projects that engage diverse audiences in the interpretation of architectural and material histories. A Guggenheim Fellow and former Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, she received her PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and has taught at Yale University, MIT, and the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Selected Publications

• Anderson, Christy. “Left on Shore: Iron and Fish in the North Atlantic.” In Land Air Sea: Architecture and Environment in the Early Modern Era, edited by Jennifer Ferng and Lauren Jacobi, 211–32. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2023.
• Anderson, Christy. “Ropewalks and the Linear City.” Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes 42, no. 4 (2023): 243–53.
• Anderson, Christy. Renaissance Architecture. Oxford History of Art. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2013.
• Anderson, Christy. “War Work: English Art and the Warburg Institute.” Common Knowledge 18, no. 1 (2012): 146–56.
• Anderson, Christy. Inigo Jones and the Classical Tradition. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2006.