Victoria Jennings

Victoria Jennings
She/Her/Hers
Graduate Student

Specialization

Areas of Concentration: Ancient Greek and Roman artwork, ancient cults, mythology, witchcraft, magic, tattooing, human remains in museums, NAGPRA and museum practices
Faculty Advisor: Claudia Moser
M.A. Thesis: "I Sing the Body Magical: Baubo and Her Apotropaic Power," completed 2020

Bio

Victoria Jennings is a Ph.D. student in History of Art & Architecture and an Associate Curator of UCSB’s Repository for Archaeological and Ethnographic Collections. Her primary research focus is on Ancient Greek and Roman artwork where she works with subjects of magic, witchcraft, mythology, female representation, ancient cults, and death practices. She has an additional specialty in museum practices of housing and displaying human remains (bog bodies, mummified remains, skeletal remains, and tattooed tissue) along with NAGPRA, CalNAGPRA, and repatriation-related issues. 

Victoria is a current recipient of the Margaret Mallory Fellowship and has previously received the Ridley-Tree Scholarship at UCSB and the Eugene Wurzel Award for Scholastic Excellence at UCLA. She holds an M.A. (UCSB 2020) done under the guidance of Dr. Claudia Moser and a committee that included Dr. Alicia Boswell (HAA, UCSB) and Dr. Elizabeth DePalma Digeser (History, UCSB); her thesis was titled I Sing the Body Magical: Baubo and Her Apotropaic Power Link opens in a new window. She previously was the receipent of the Murray Roman Curatorial Fellowship and held the position of Internship Program Coordinator within the Art, Design, & Architecture Museum at UCSB where she helped curate the 2022 MFA exhibition It Appears to Be a Circle Link opens in a new window. Victoria was the co-organizer of UCSB's History of Art and Architecture's Art History Graduate Student Association 46th Annual Academic Symposium Objects of Affection: Itineraries, Sensations, and “Thingness” in 2022. She holds a B.A. (UCLA 2017) completed alongside an honors thesis titled Deeper Than Inside: Understanding and Analyzing Ancient Greek and Roman Female Genital Artwork done under the guidance of Dr. Sharon Gerstel (Art History, UCLA). She has worked at both the Fowler Museum at UCLA and UCLA's Design Media Arts Department, volunteered in the Decorative Arts and Sculpture Conservation Lab at the Getty Museum, participated in UCLA's Undergraduate Research Week, and held internships at private conservation studios in Hollywood. She has also lived, worked, and studied for extended periods in Florence and Milan.