Rana Brentjes

Rana Brentjes is the Digital Content Curator of the "Visualization and Material Cultures of the Heavens in Eurasia and North Africa (4000 BCE–1700 CE)" Working Group at the MPIWG. In this role, she both edits and further develops the VoH Image Database. She also cooperates with internal and external researchers by providing material for scholarly presentations, co-organizing workshops and conferences, co-editing books, as well as collaborating with the Research IT-Team in developing the Working Group’s digital humanities projects.

Her broad educational profile as a photo designer, contemporary art historian (Sotheby’s / Manchester University) and sociocultural historian (Goldsmith College, University of London) as well as her work experience as an art curator, editor, and executive administrator, make her well-suited to these tasks. She was previously the assistant editor of the Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies (2023) and is currently co-editing Imagining the Heavens across Eurasia from Antiquity to Early Modernity (Mimesis, forthcoming).

Since 2021, she has presented papers on the research potentials of the database and is currently preparing a digital series to publicize these findings. Moreover, she oversees the Working Group’s lecture series and co-organized the  "Visualizations of the Heavens—The Database as a Research Tool" Workshop in October 2022, as well as the upcoming "International Conference on Tombs and Astral Knowledge from Egypt to China (1000 BCE–1000 CE)." In 2024, she will design a virtual exhibition and pilot a network-analytical study with materials from the database.