Nino Zchomelidse specializes in medieval art, with an emphasis on theoretical, historiographical, and political aspects; the role of the arts for the construction of civic identity; and representation and mimesis. Her second single authored book entitled The Word in Action. Art, Ritual, and Civic Identity in Medieval South Italy is forthcoming (end of 2013) with Penn State University Press. She is currently working on a new book project on the notion of the “authentic” and the processes of authentication in medieval art, particularly of head-reliquaries, icons, and imprints on cloth or seals.

Nino Zchomelidse has published on medieval painting in the time of the Gregorian Reform, the representation of the “invisible God” and medieval image theory. Her recent book Meaning in Motion. The Semantics of Movement in Medieval Art (co-edited with Giovanni Freni) explores the various layers of meaning that buildings and works of art develop through ritual action. Additionally she has worked on northern German and Danish art in the first half of the nineteenth century, in particular on aesthetics and science in the academic tradition in Denmark, intellectual and artistic exchange between Rome and Copenhagen, and the role of landscape painting for the construction of “national” identity. Nino Zchomelidse has held academic positions at the University of Tübingen (Germany) and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (Copenhagen). She has been awarded fellowships and grants from the Gerda Henkel Foundation (in connection with the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome), the Carlsberg Foundation (Copenhagen), the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. She has been named the George H. and Mildred F. Whitfield Preceptor in the Humanities for a term of three years.

PUBLICATIONS (selection): Santa Maria Immacolata in Ceri: Sakrale Malerei im Zeitalter der Gregorianischen Reform (Rome, 1996); Fictions of Isolation: Artistic and Intellectual Exchange in Rome in the First Half of the 19th Century, co-edited with Lorenz Enderlein, Analecta Romana Instituti Danici, Supplementum 37 (Rome, 2006); Meaning in Motion. Semantics of Movement in Medieval Art and Architecture (co-edited with Giovanni Freni) published by the Department of Art and Archaeology with Princeton University Press, 2011); "Deus - homo - imago. Representing the divine in the twelfth century," in Looking Beyond. Visions, Dreams and Insights in Medieval Art and History, ed. by C. Hourihane (University Park, 2010), 107-127; "The Aura of the Numinous and Its Reproduction: Medieval Paintings of the Savior in Rome and Latium," in: Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 55, (2010), 221-262; "Descending Word and Resurrecting Christ: The Exultet Rolls in Southern Italy," in Meaning in Motion, 3-34.