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Jessica Barker is a specialist in medieval art, with a particular emphasis on sculpture. She studied at the University of Oxford and the 91��Ƭ�� Institute of Art, where she was subsequently Henry Moore Postdoctoral Fellow. She joined The 91��Ƭ�� in 2018, after two years as a lecturer in world art at the University of East Anglia.

Jessica’s research ranges across northern Europe and the Iberian peninsular, addressing questions of the macabre, gender, materiality and the body. Her prize-winning monograph, Stone Fidelity: Marriage and Emotion in Medieval Tomb Sculpture,��based on work from her doctoral thesis, explores the intersection of love and death in funerary art. She is the co-editor of��Revisiting the Monument. Fifty Years Since Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture, a collection of essays addressing Erwin Panofsky’s scholarship on tomb sculpture. She has published widely on death and commemoration, with articles in journals including��Art History,��The Burlington Magazine, Gesta, and��The Sculpture Journal.

Forthcoming publications include an article in Art Bulletin on “Maintenance Work and the Long Life of Materials in Late-Medieval Art,” as well as two essays on the artistic patronage of Iberian noblewomen in England. Her current projects include co-curating an exhibition exploring measurement and regulation in medieval and contemporary art, entitled The Rule: Shaping��Lives, Medieval and Modern, which will open at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art in 2026. She is also working on a research project investigating the lives and afterlives of the �貹���õ���,��columns erected on the coast of West Africa by Portuguese navigators.