Barbara Karl

Barbara Karl is a researcher at the Austrian Academy for Sciences in Vienna. She holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Vienna and has also studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, the University of Innsbruck and the New University of Lisbon. She has been awarded numerous study grants and fellowships (Warburg Institute, European Science Foundation, Italian Foreign Ministry, European University Institute) and has carried out her research in Italy, Portugal, the UK, India and the USA.

Fluent in German, English, Italian, Portuguese and French, with additional linguistic studies in Spanish, Latin and Russian, she is currently working on Objects from the Islamic World in Viennese Collections, a continuation of her last post-doctoral project on Islamic Objects in the Medici Collections, prepared at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa in 2005-07.

Stitches in Time: Embroidered Indian Colchas Commissioned by the Portuguese (1550-1700)