Graduate Students

Deniz comes from Istanbul, Turkey and she graduated from Boston University with a BA in Art History and a minor in Archaeology in 2023. She served as the President of Art History Association at BU and was a writer for Squinch Magazine, a student-run Art History magazine. She has interned at two art galleries in Boston, Pucker Gallery and the Guild of Boston Artists, and volunteered at the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum.
Deniz holds interests in Global Contemporary Art and Documentary Photography. She is also interested in issues of representation and diversity in the museum world. She is dedicated to do research on Contemporary Turkish artists and countering marginalizing approaches to Turkish art; in doing so, she hopes that Contemporary Turkish artists can gain more visibility. She is also passionate about creating more diverse and accessible exhibition spaces in her future career.

Avery Dubyk graduated summa cum laude from Virginia Tech with a B.A. in Art History. As an undergraduate, he interned at the Blacksburg Museum and Cultural Foundation, where he conducted research on the history of the area for several exhibits and co-curated an exhibit on an important local movie theatre with another intern. As a scholar, he is particularly interested in American art, especially of the nineteenth century. He also has interests in exhibition design and planning and hopes to pursue a career in the museum field in the future.

Ana immigrated to the United States from Armenia when she was eighteen. She graduated summa cum laude from University of California, Irvine with double major in Art and Art History. She was also the senior studio resident of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts' Honors program, which enabled her to produce a thesis project consisting of black and white large format film photographs made in both Armenia and United States. They explored the topics of immigration-particularly the displacement and anxiety one might experience. The project since traveled to be showcased in several galleries, including Armenia and Lebanon. After graduating, she became a Getty Marrow undergraduate intern, working with the head of the architectural collections at the Getty Research Institute. After the internship, she continued to work at the Getty as a cultural heritage photographer, digitizing old and fragile books from the Getty Research Institute's Special Collections. At Tufts, she intends to conduct research in the topic of Medieval Armenian art, focusing on manuscripts and their religious iconography that will also serve as a foundation for her dissertation project for a Ph.D.

Kate graduated with high distinction from the University of British Columbia with a BA in Art History. While at UBC, she earned the Patsy and David Heffel Award in Art History and the Perry Barr Hall Scholarship, and she presented her research at the Art History Student Association’s Undergraduate Symposium. She also worked as a research assistant, working on a project surrounding exhibition culture, imperialism, and national identity in the early Third Republic of France. Kate is interested in French art, particularly of the nineteenth century, and the intersections of art and science, and she intends to continue exploring these topics while at Tufts.

Kristen graduated summa cum laude from William & Mary with a double major in Art History and Government. As an undergraduate, Kristen conducted research on American protest art in the 1960s and late-19^th century European painting, as well as assisting in the curation of an exhibition entitled "The Art of Well-Being," displayed at William & Mary's Muscarelle Museum of Art. Since graduating, she has worked as an Americorps member and a legal researcher in Washington, DC. At Tufts, Kristen intends to continue her research on 19^th century painting, with a focus on French artists and the dichotomy of the public and private display of art.

Naomi graduated summa cum laude from Fordham University, double majored in Art History and English, and minored in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Jewish Studies. During her undergraduate career, Naomi held internships at a special collections library, a commercial gallery, an arts publication, the Fairfield University Art Museum, the Derfner Judaica Museum, and The Jewish Museum. After graduation, Naomi held positions at Christie’s and The Bruce Museum before returning to graduate school. During her undergraduate career, Naomi researched female Jewish art dealers in the early 20th century and how associations with Expressionists and Fauvists and contemporary social events within the European Jewish community resulted in their erasure from greater art historical narratives. While at Tufts, she intends to continue pursuing this interest and connect the interests created in her undergraduate career to provenance and Nazi-looted art.

Sofia conducted her undergraduate studies at Bryn Mawr College where she earned her degree in History of Art. While at college, she worked in Bryn Mawr College’s Special Collections in the Rare Book and Manuscripts Department. In her final year of college, she conducted research on a collection of Congolese water vessels. Her experience researching these was expanded when she began volunteering in the Penn Museum’s African Art Collection. After her undergraduate experience, Sofia relocated to Seattle where she worked at the Seattle Children’s Museum. At Tufts, Sofia hopes to continue to learn and contemplate museums, art history, and the ethics of museum collections.

Nathan graduated from the University of Utah, where he majored in English and minored in Art History and Philosophy. While an undergraduate, he studied representations and theories of urban spaces in twentieth-century art and literature. As a graduate student at Tufts, he continues his interests in twentieth-century art, devoting particular attention to iconoclasm and what its materiality reveals about public memory and urban spaces. He will pursue a PhD following his time at Tufts.

Nick (he/him/his) is a non-traditional graduate student, changing careers after nearly a decade spent in healthcare. He completed bachelor's degrees in art history and molecular, cellular, and developmental biology from the University of Colorado Boulder, and a doctorate in osteopathic medicine from the New York Institute of Technology. Recently, he has interned for the University of Colorado Boulder Art Museum and the Longmont Museum and was honored to serve as commencement speaker for the Art & Art History graduation at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research interests focus on the contemporary arts and their intersections with community, disenfranchised peoples, and scientific fields. Nick is joining Tufts University to further his life long passion for the arts, switching careers from medicine to museums where he hopes to work with practicing artists to cultivate inclusive, cathartic, and community-oriented environments.