Dr des. Marina Sartori

Projects

Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ (2026–2032)

• 2026–2028: Principal Investigator of the project IRP15:
  Intermedial Echoes: Visual Borrowings and Skeuomorphic Design in Manuscript Cultures

Research Interests

As an Egyptologist, I am specialised in ancient Egyptian visual culture and art history, with particular focus on wall paintings and reliefs, and hieroglyphic palaeography. However, my research spans broader art historical, as well as multimodality and design theory, reaching into semiotics and the iconicity of writing systems. My publications revolve around the graphic features and visual impact of writing and single signs, including layout and visual details, and more recently on importance of colour as an essential element of Egyptian writing. I am very interested in the relationship between different scripts and writing contexts, and as such have also written about, and edited books focusing on, graffiti.

CV

After completing a BA in Classics and a MA in Egyptology in Italy, I earned my PhD in Egyptology from the University of Basel in 2022 with a dissertation examining the visuality of the hieroglyphic script and its interplay with figurative representation in ancient Egyptian visual culture. From 2023 to 2025 I was a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, with the project “Idiosyncratic graphic registers in New Kingdom funerary manuscripts,” which investigated the palaeography and cultural significance of polychrome hieroglyphs in manuscripts, comparing these with monumental inscriptions. Since 2025, I am teaching associate at the University of Oxford, and since 2026 I lead the project “Intermediate Echoes: Visual Borrowings and Skeuomorphic Design in Manuscript Cultures” at the CSMC. I have worked as an epigrapher in several archaeological missions since 2017, spanning research in Old Kingdom pyramids with the French-Swiss Mission in Saqqara, Middle Kingdom tombs in the Theban necropolis with the Polish Archaeological Mission in North Asasif and in New Kingdom Theban tombs with the Swiss Mission in Sheikh Abd el-Qurna. As a keen communicator, I have organised several academic events, including the Oxford Summer School on Egyptian and Sudanese Art 2024 and Current Research in Egyptology 2024 in Liverpool.