Federica Gigante

Tel: 01865 277 288

Research interests: 

Collecting Islamic artefacts in Europe; cross-cultural exchanges between the Islamic world and Europe; astronomical instruments from the Islamic world; astrolabes and celestial globes; Islamic metalwork; history and circulation of technologies and decorative vocabulary across central Asia and the Mediterranean.

Faculty / College address:

History of Science Museum

Junior Supernumerary Fellow, Exeter College

The Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

Current Projects:

Finding and Founding: Decolonising Astronomical Instruments from the Islamic World at the History of Science Museum

An Islamic Laboratory of Scientific Instruments in Virtual Reality

Forthcoming Publications:

All Things Turkish: Islamic Art in Seventeenth-Century Italy, monograph

‘Casaubon on Arabic and Turkish Coins’, with Andrew Burnett, in Isaac Casaubon, Droz, Geneva

‘The Construction of Celestial Globes According to al-Sufi’s Tradition’, in Ulugh Beg’s Manuscript of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī, Book of Fixed Stars (Arabe 5036), Müller und Schindler

Past exhibitions:

‘Precious and Rare Islamic Metalwork from The Courtauld’, History of Science Museum, Oxford, and online, 9 October-10 January 2020-21

‘From Istanbul to Oxford – the Origins of Coffee-Drinking in England’, Ashmolean Museum, 28 September-15 March 2019-20

‘Dimensions: The Mathematics of Symmetry and Space’, Ashmolean Museum, 16 March-9 June 2018