Professor Dimitri Laboury
We are pleased to welcome Dr. Dimitri Laboury as the first Visiting Professor of NINO. Laboury is Senior Research Associate of the Belgian National Foundation for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS) at the University of Liège, where he is head of the Ancient Egyptian Art Historical Research Unit and teaches Ancient Egyptian Art History, Archaeology, History and History of Religions.
Trained as an Egyptologist and an Art Historian, Laboury specialized in the study of Ancient Egyptian thought and cultural history through the art of that civilization. His interests range from the study of royal statuary (and the issue of portraiture in this context) to the analysis of painterly practices in the decoration of Theban Tombs, or from the history of western reception of Ancient Egyptian art to a theoretical approach to the functioning and meaning of Ancient Egyptian art. He took part in several archaeological expeditions in Egypt, notably in the Theban area and in Amarna, and co-directs the Belgian Archaeological Expedition in the Theban Necropolis. He also initiated different archaeometrical research projects on Ancient Egyptian monuments.
Thanks to a Research Incentive Grant of the FNRS, he has been leading those last years an important project untitled “Painters and Painting in the Theban Necropolis during the 18th Dynasty”, studying Ancient Egyptian artists, their practices and social statuses in Pharaonic Egypt. He is currently completing the edition of an Oxford Handbook of Egyptian Epigraphy and Paleography at Oxford University Press, with Dr Vanessa Davies. His previous book was devoted to a new biography of king Akhenaton (Paris, 2010), already available in Spanish and to be translated soon in English.
Laboury will be present in Leiden in March, May and June 2020 as the first Visiting Professor of NINO. While carrying out his own research, Laboury will provide two guest lectures in the BA-course of Miriam Müller on art history. Students who wish to follow this class may contact Dr. Müller. Furthermore, Laboury will give a lecture at The Walking Dead symposium on March 9th, organised by Lara Weiss at the RMO, and will present at the Visual Literacy Conference on 20 March (for more information contact Visiting Research Fellow Frederik Rogner).