About

Finbarr Barry Flood is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of the Humanities at New York University and the founder-director of Silsila: Center for Material Histories. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in Islamic Art History in 1993 and his B.A. from Trinity College in Archaeology with Mental and Moral Science in Dublin in 1988. His research focuses on the art and architecture of the Islamic world, exploring cross-cultural dimensions of Islamic material culture, theories and practices of image-making, and technologies of representation. Flood's work also encompasses art historical historiography, methodology, and theory, with particular attention to issues of Orientalism. He has held prestigious fellowships, including the Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, and has been recognized with numerous awards such as the Iris Foundation Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Decorative Arts and the Ananda K. Coomaraswamy Book Prize of the Association for Asian Studies. Flood has authored and edited significant publications, including 'A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture' and 'Objects of Translation,' contributing extensively to the scholarship on Islamic art, medieval visual culture, and regional iconography. His scholarly work is characterized by a detailed examination of material culture, emphasizing the mobility, regionalism, and intercultural exchanges that shape Islamic art and architecture across different periods and regions.

Research topics

• Art
• Social Science
• Sociology
• Art history
• Ancient history
• History
• Religious studies
• Theology
• Archaeology
• Philosophy

Selected publications

• From Incantation to Ingestion? Polemics and Politics of Islamic Bowl Magic

  West 86th · 2025-03-01

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  One of the shibboleths of modern scholarship is that the origins of engraved medieval metal vessels known as Islamic magic-medicinal bowls lie in a series of inked ceramic incantation bowls from late-antique Iraq. Since the Islamic bowls differ in their materiality, iconographic context, and function, the assumption is problematic. Moreover, despite the insistence on continuity in the face of a significant chronological disjunction between both kinds of bowls, the existence of a class of late antique incantation bowls inked in Arabic (rather than in Aramaic, Mandaic, or Syriac) has been almost entirely overlooked. This neglect reveals significant biases in modern scholarship underwritten by collecting practices and the antiquities market. It has also obscured the existence of widespread and long-standing traditions of inking unglazed ceramic vessels with Arabic texts for “magical” purposes, paralleling the traditions represented by the better-known (and more traditionally collectible) metal Islamic bowls. Such unostentatious ceramics fall foul of a high-low division that has been pervasive in structuring the canon of Islamic art history. Rather than demonstrating continuities with a single localized tradition, their existence across a broad geographic and temporal span points to a more general relationship between rituals of domesticity and the materials of magic meriting closer examination than it has received to date.

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• <i>Traces of the Prophets: Relics and Sacred Spaces in Early Islam</i> By <scp>Adam Bursi</scp>

  Journal of Islamic Studies · 2025-11-22

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• Introduction

  Res Anthropology and Aesthetics · 2025-11-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• Image Credits

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2024-02-15

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• Contents

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2024-02-15

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• Chapter 3 Coconuts and Cosmology in Medieval Germany

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2024-02-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum

  Routledge eBooks · 2024 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Art
  • Ancient history
  • Art history

  He turned his head like an old tortoise in the sunlight. “Is it true that there are many images in the Wonder House of Lahore?” He repeated the last words as one making sure of an address. “That is true,” said Abdullah. “It is full of heathen būts. Thou also art an idolater.”

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• Frontmatter

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2024-02-15

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• A Note on Transliteration

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2024-02-15

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding
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• Chapter 6 Narrative and Wonder in the Indian Ocean

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2024-02-15

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Frequent coauthors

• Beate Fricke

  17 shared

• Yves Porter

  13 shared

• Benjamin Kunkel

  2 shared

• James Benning

  1 shared

• Tavia Nyong’o

  1 shared

• Andrew Lichtenstein

  1 shared

• Sam Durant

  California Institute of the Arts

  1 shared

• Tania Bruguera

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Slade Professor of Fine Art, University of Oxford (2018-19)
• Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2015-2016)
• ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship with Professor Beate…
• Iris Foundation Award for Outstanding Contributions to the D…
• Winner of the Ananda K. Coomaraswamy Book Prize of the Assoc…