Dr. Christina Heflin

Christina Heflin is a DFG-funded (German Research Foundation) postdoctoral researcher at LMU Munich and is currently working on naval and maritime documentary drawings from the twentieth century. This is part of a larger habilitation project on the visualization of oceanic knowledge in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries which will examine visual and material cultures connected to marine science, environmental preservation, and tracking of the sea and its inhabitants. Christina was previously a fellow at The Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome, and Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte (DFK) Paris. She studied art history and conservation at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University and obtained a PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London, where she worked on Surrealism, materialism, and marine life. She is cochair of the communications committee and board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism (ISSS).

Selected Publications:

• “Aquatic Sensing in Jean Painlevé’s Environments.” In Surrealism and Ecology, edited by Anne Marie Butler, Donna Roberts, and Iveta Slavkova. Vernon Press, 2025.
• “Eileen Agar and the Undersea Marvelous.” SHC: Arcade. 2025. https://shc.stanford.edu/arcade/interventions/eileen-agar-and-undersea-marvelous.
• “The Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse d’Eileen Agar et les modes sensoriels” [The Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse by Eileen Agar and Sensory Modes]. Horsd’œuvre, no. 48 (2021–22).