Marissa Perez

Marissa Perez’s research interests span from the early modern period to the 19th century, focusing on the art and scientific visual culture produced within the context of British and French empire networks throughout the global “tropics.” In particular, she is interested in the acquisition and circulation of Indigenous art from the Indian Ocean to the eastern Pacific Ocean and their reception in the imperial Atlantic world. She is also interested in the biogeographies of natural materials and their visual representations—-such as plants and wood, feathers, butterfly wings, skins, and entire animal bodies—and their entanglements with British and French colonial projects and collecting practices. She is currently writing on William Ockleford Oldman’s pencil rubbings of carved wooden paddles from the Austral Islands, and has written previously on Victorian hummingbird dioramas, Leopold Blaschka’s glass marine invertebrate models, and natural history illustration in “British” India. She is in her second year of the Post-Baccalaureate Education Program (PREP) and hopes to continue on to doctoral studies next fall.