Veronika Poier

Fellow in the History of Islamic Art and Material Culture at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies

Dr. Veronika Poier is Fellow in the History of Islamic Art and Material Culture at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on knowledge exchange among artistic and scientific communities, with a particular interest in the actors and social groups who preserve and spread artistic and scientific knowledge in times of concurrent warfare.

In the past, this topical concern has led Veronika to the Arab States Unit of UNESCO, where she worked on capacity building and the preservation of skills in the context of the reconstruction of heritage sites in Syria and Iraq. Prior to this, Veronika curated an exhibition in the Islamic Art Museum of the Pergamon Museum, for which she received a grant by the European Union. Veronika also received the Bert and Sally de Vries Fellowship of the American Council for Overseas Research (ACOR) in Jordan for her fieldwork on displaced Syrian craftsmen in Mafraq.

Currently Veronika shares her expertise in the preservation of heritage as the co-editor of the book “Ukrainian Cultural Heritage in Times of War,” (Bloomsbury, forthcoming). Veronika furthermore pursues her book project on the transregional ties of craftsmen connecting Anatolia and Iran through the patronage of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed (r.1413-1421).

Veronika holds a PhD in the History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University and has previously taught Art History at Harvard, Political Humanities at Sciences Po and Islamic Art at Vienna University.

Publications

Monographs and edited volumes:
- Co-Editor with Stefaniia Demchuk: Ukrainian Cultural Heritage in Times of War, UCL Critical Heritage Series, Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, London, forthcoming 2027.

Articles:
- “Maryam, Mary, Mihrab: between architecture, word and image” Festschrift for Gülru Necipoglu, International Peer-reviewed, Brill, Leiden, Forthcoming 2026.
- “Literary Chains Frozen in Tile? The Roles of Salman Savaji and Ahmedi in the Persian Epigraphic Program of the Green Zaviye in Bursa (821-827/1419-1424),” in Diyar Special Issue, Multilingualism, Translation, Transfer: Persian in the Ottoman Empire, International Peer-reviewed Journal, 2024.
- “Cross-Cultural Modernity: Military Reform and the Image of the Shah,” An Album of Qajar Drawings, ed. David Roxburgh, Yale University Press, New Haven, (2017), pp. 171-183.

Book Reviews:
- Dima Dayoub, Kasmo, Mollenhauer (Eds.), “A Culture of Building. Courtyard Houses in the Old City of Aleppo”, 2023, Beirut: al Ayn, Book Review in: International Journal of Islamic Art, 2024, Jul., p. 475 – 477.
- Patricia Blessing: Architecture and Material Politics in the Fifteenth-century Ottoman Empire (2022), Cambridge University Press, Book Review in: Turcica, vol. 57, 2026.

In preparation:
- Author: Re-building Bursa: how the court of Mehmed I shaped early Ottoman art and sovereignty.