Marjan Sterckx is associate professor of Art History at Ghent University, where she lectures on the histories of nineteenth-century art and of interior design. She is the founding chair of the UGent-VUB research group The Inside Story: Art, Interior & Architecture 1750-1950 (ThIS), that yearly organizes the Studiedag Historisch Interieur en Design. Sterckx is founding co-editor of Brepols Publishers' book series XIX. Studies in 19th-century Art and Visual culture, and co-editor of Tijdschrift voor Interieurgeschiedenis en Design. She is a board member of ESNA (European Society of Nineteenth-century Art) and advisory board member of the scholarly journals Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide (NCAW) and Oud Holland.
Her research concerns art, especially sculpture, in relation to gender and space (public and domestic), as well as interior design history, c. 1750-1950. Her PhD research on women sculptors and their work in the metropolis (Paris, London, Brussels, 1770-1953), published by the KVAB, was awarded the ‘Tri-annual Award for Humanities' of Academische Stichting Leuven. In 2019, Sterckx was denominated 'Laureaat van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten, klasse Kunsten'. In 2021, she created the exhibition and catalog Crime Scenes, on interwar interiors through the lens of forensic photography.
Research interests: 19th-century art & art practice, 19th-century sculpture, women sculptors, sculpture & photography, monuments, art & gender, art & corporeality, art & the interior, interior painting, historic interiors, design history
