Is an art and image historian specialising in the history and theory of photography. She works as a postdoctoral research coordinator at the Centre for Advanced Study inherit. heritage in transformation and is an associate member of the Centre for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin). Previously, she was a research and teaching associate at the Chair of Eastern European Art History at the Institute of Art and Visual History at HU Berlin.

Elisaveta Ernst’s research – currently conducted within her project, “Imaging the Invisible: Epistemological Critique and Exoplanetary Heritage in the Context of the Dark Universe” – focuses on model theory and the critical analysis of image-based knowledge production in art and science. Her further research and teaching interests encompass the aesthetics of totalitarianisms; the art history of Eastern Europe; postcolonial, queer, and postsecular theories in art history; visual activisms; media memory politics; and (post-)digital heritage.

Elisaveta Ernst studied Art History, Theory and History of Photography, Protestant Theology, and Gender Studies in Berlin, Zurich, and Vienna. Her doctoral dissertation, “Annemarie Schwarzenbach’s Image Reports 1937-38: Journalistic Travel Photography and the Political Aesthetics of the Documentary”, was supported by a scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and was awarded the 2024 Rudolf Arnheim Prize for Early-Career Scholars by the Institute for Art and Image History at HU Berlin.

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