Birgit Mersmann is an art historian and image theoretician with a pronounced transcultural research and teaching profile. Her research foci include modern and contemporary Western and East Asian art, image and media theory, translation studies, transculturality, visual cultures, art and migration, global art history, the history of Asian biennials, interrelations between script and image, and documentary photography.

Since October 2018 she holds the professorship for modern and contemporary art at the University of Duisburg-Essen. From 2015-2016 she was Visiting Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art/Aesthetic Theory at the University of Cologne, and from 2008 to 2015 Assistant Professor for Non-Western and European Art at the international Jacobs University in Bremen. She was a founding member of the Humanities Research Center «Humanities, Modernity, Globalization» at Jacobs University which she headed from 2011-2012. From 1998 to 2002 she taught as DAAD Visiting Professor at the Seoul National University in South Korea where she started researching contemporary East Asian art.

For more details on her research and publications, please visit her profile page at the University of Duisburg-Essen.