Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes

 Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes is Professor and Chair of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Amsterdam. Until 2014 she worked as Professor of Iconology at the University of Ulster, Belfast. From 2007 to 2011 she was Head of the Research Graduate School there, leading particularly the PhD with Practice programme. She studied at the Universities of Heidelberg, London, Bonn and Cologne, where she gained her PhD in 2000. It was researched with a James Joyce Foundation Scholarship in Zurich and followed by an Irish Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellowship at UCD. She was Visiting Scholar at the University of Cologne in 2012.

Her research focuses on word and image studies, particularly the visual legacies of (Irish) writers (Joyce, Beckett, Sebald), also considering performance, the historiography of art (Warburg, Giedion-Welcker) and curation. Rooted in Joseph Beuys studies, she has an interest in sculpture, performance, social practices, as well as post-War art histories.

Her publications include the books Post-War Germany and 'Objective Chance': W.G. Sebald, Joseph Beuys and Tacita Dean (Steidl 2008, 2011), James Joyce als Inspirationsquelle für Joseph Beuys (Olms 2001), and Joyce in Art (Lilliput 2004). This book accompanied her large, international exhibition on the theme, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin. She has curated exhibitions of contemporary art for: Goethe Institut, Dublin; Tolstoy Estate, Russia; MoA, Seoul National University, Korea; Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast; LCGA, Limerick and CCI, Paris.