Specialization:
Areas of Concentration: Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean Architecture; History of Medicine; Spatiality of Disease; Urban Infrastructure; Port Cities
Faculty Advisor: Richard Wittman
M.Litt Thesis: "Roman Holiday: Constructions of National Identities in John Shaw Smith’s Environs of Rome" (University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland, completed 2023)
Bio:
Elizabeth Saubestre is a PhD student in the Department of History of Art & Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in the architecture of the nineteenth-century Mediterranean world. Her project investigates lazaretto complexes in Southern Europe and North Africa as sites of contestation and negotiation between the individual body and the biopolity of the nation through a spatial lens. She is broadly interested in modern Mediterranean studies, and completed a minor examination in late-Ottoman cities.
Her work has been supported by the Regents Fellowship (2024-25) and the Margaret Mallory Fellowship (2026-27). She has published in react/review: a responsive journal for art and architecture, and is a contributing writer at Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal.
Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Elizabeth received her B.A. in History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. She then completed her Master of Letters in Art History at the University of St. Andrews under the advisement of Dr. Lenia Kouneni, engaging in archival research at the University of Edinburgh and writing her thesis on the hobbyist photographer John Shaw Smith’s travel photographs of Rome, for which she was awarded distinction. She spent the subsequent summer earning a certificate in French Museological Studies from the École du Louvre in Paris. In addition to her research, she is engaged in the local arts community, having worked in Development at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and helping with panels and events in conjunction with UCSB’s Department of Art.