Justin Davies
Project Coordinator/Research Lead
Justin Davies is an art historian specialising in seventeenth-century Flemish Art. He was the co-founder of the multinational, multidisciplinary Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project 2016–2022. JVDPPP published the results of its research online and through a free to access Jordaens Van Dyck Journal – see www.jordaensvandyck.org. JVDPPP studied Van Dyck and Jordaens’s paintings on panel, including panel makers and making and standard sizing. In 2018 he identified the portrait of the of the Dutch Golden Age painter Pieter Soutman by Van Dyck in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna and co-authored the KHM focus exhibition catalogue, Ein Maler als Modell: Van Dycks Porträt von Pieter Soutman. He has published four articles related to Van Dyck in The Burlington Magazine, two in collaboration with James Innes-Mulraine. In 2026 he wrote an essay and 10 of the 60 entries for the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Van Dyck. Il Europeo – Van Dyck. The European’ at the Palazzo Ducale, Genoa, co-curated by Anna Orlando and Katlijne Van der Stighelen.
A graduate of the University of Cambridge in History, Justin was a soldier and diplomat before becoming an art historian. He was an Affiliated Lecturer and Knowledge Exchange Fellow in the History of Art Department at Cambridge 2023–2026, where he was a Fellow-Commoner at Trinity Hall, also a Visiting Fellow of the Rubenshuis, Antwerp. He is soon to defend his PhD dissertation on Van Dyck’s panel paintings at the University of Amsterdam, the culmination of 10 years research, for which he was awarded a Bourse de Doctorat by the Fondation Périer-D’Ieteren.
Lily Lowe
Researcher
Lily Lowe is an art historian, researcher and cataloguer specialising in European Art 1400-1700. She conducts provenance, archival and art historical research on paintings for institutions, collectors, foundations, and the art market. Lily is also a Teaching Assistant for Art History Link-Up, a charity providing free Art History A-Level, EPQ and HPQ courses at the Courtauld for students in state-supported schools where Art History is not taught.
Lily studied history of art at the University of Cambridge where she achieved a First Class mark in her Bachelor of Arts degree and was awarded a Distinction for her postgraduate Master of Philosophy degree. Her MPhil research focused on the intersection between illusion and reality in seventeenth-century depictions of Dutch domestic spaces. After graduating, Lily completed a curatorial internship at Althorp House, co-organises and manages the internship scheme for Cambridge students across the art world, and is co-editing the forthcoming Jordaens Van Dyck Journal 4, the final research publication for the ground-breaking, multinational Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project – http://jordaensvandyck.org
Miles Fletcher
Researcher
Miles Fletcher is an art historian and PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, specialising in the visual culture of Early Modern England and the Low Countries. His work centres on the relationship between art and knowledge, particularly how the making and viewing of art could serve as a method of learning about the wider world. He is currently writing a dissertation on this topic, examining the intersection of early-modern landscape art, natural philosophy, and the mechanical sciences.
Miles holds a BA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an MA from the Warburg Institute, where he won a scholarship in 2023 and was trained in part by the National Gallery, London. In May-June 2025, he was a visiting scholar at the Rubenshuis, Antwerp, and has since given talks in Oxford and Antwerp on his doctoral research. Miles also supervises undergraduates and occasionally lectures in the Department of History of Art at Cambridge. His PhD is supervised by Professor Alexander Marr and is generously funded by a Lisa Pan – Ibn Battutah Studentship.
Website: mileswfletcher.com
Joost Vander Auwera
Senior Adviser/Expert
Joost Vander Auwera, PhD in Art History (Ghent University) and MBA (Vlerick Louvain Ghent School of Management), devoted some 80 publications to 17th century Flemish painting and to the business administration of cultural institutions. Apart from having been a teaching assistant to the late Prof. Dr. Roger – A. d’Hulst and Prof. Dr. Claire Van Damme and Professor in Museology and Cultural Management at Ghent University, as well as Guest Professor in Connoisseurship at the Brussels VUB University, he was senior curator at the Old Masters Department of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels for thirty years (1992-2022), and was involved with leading positions in international and multidisciplinary projects on non-invasive dendrochronology and of panel paintings as Co-Founder and Project Leader of the Jordaens Van Dyck Panel Paintings Project 2016–22 with a team of 15 scholars from 9 nationalities – see the website www.jordaensvandyck.org.
Together with Dr. Sabine van Sprang he curated the exhibition in the Brussels museum on Rubens. A Genius at Work (2007-2008) and with Dr. Irene Schaudies and Dr. Justus Lange on Jordaens and the Antique (Brussels & Kassel, 2012-2013). His dissertation (2003) on Abraham Janssen van Nuyssen (Liège (?) 1571/75-Antwerp 1632) stimulated his interest and research into the understudied domain of Flemish Caravaggism. He was a member of the Organizing and Scientific Committees of the International Conference on Flemish Caravaggism –Painters from the Spanish Netherlands and the Principality of Liège. A Status Quaestionis at the Academia Belgica in Rome, organised by its Director Dr. Sabine Van Sprang on 12-13 December 2023 and delivered two lectures: Flemish Caravaggism: where do we stand and why is this colloquium so much needed? & Abraham Janssen and Caravaggism. Most recently he wrote the chapter on ‘The sketch in the footsteps of Rubens and in the eye of the contemporary’ in the catalogue of the exhibition Drafts: From Rubens to Khnopff, (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, 10.10.2024 – 16.02.2025).