Robyn Barrow is a PhD Candidate and art historian of the medieval Nordic world. Before beginning her doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania, Robyn received a BA from Rhodes College in the History of Art and an MA in medieval art from the Courtauld Institute in London. Her dissertation argues that the medieval north was a space of artistic innovation, communication, and transformation. Objects made by artists enmeshed in this rich circulatory system of medieval trade were fashioned for utility, ritual and luxury for diverse and widely dispersed communities. By situating agentive objects made from four materials—metals, antler, timber, and arctic ivory—in their ecological contexts, her project makes the case that modes of ritual and art-making in the Far North were direct products of the collision of and communication between neighboring Nordic communities, landscapes and materials. Last year, Robyn was a Fulbright Fellow on Iceland. She is now the 2022-2025 Paul Mellon Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. She has published articles in major academic journals such as The Medieval Globe and Different Visions, and has presented her work in forums like the Medieval Academy of America.