Rate My Professor Arvi Wattel

Arvi Wattel is a Lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Western Australia School of Design. He received his education from Radboud University Nijmegen. Before joining UWA, Wattel lectured at Radboud University Nijmegen, the University of Maastricht, and for Oberlin College in Arezzo. He has held a visiting fellowship at the Department of the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University and fellowships at the Fondazione Ermitage in Ferrara, the Kunsthistorisches Institut (Max Planck Gesellschaft) in Florence, the Dutch Institute for Art History in Florence, and the Royal Netherlandish Institute in Rome. Wattel received grants from the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund and Dr Hendrik Muller's Vaderlandsch Fonds, and was awarded the UWA Student Guild's Students' Choice Award in 2019.

His research focuses on questions of centre and periphery, marginalization and alterity in Renaissance Italy and, from a global perspective, Dutch seventeenth-century encounters with Australia and Asia. Major projects include 'City and Court in Renaissance Ferrara,' examining local identity under Alfonso I d’Este (1505-1534), and 'Visualising Batavia Silverware: Imaging and Analysing VOC's Precious Metal Trade Objects for Mughal India,' a collaboration with UWA, WA Museum, University of Amsterdam, and Rijksmuseum. He has secured funding including the 2019 UWA Research Collaboration Award ($11,500), Shared Cultural Heritage Programme grant ($24,574), and participation in the COST Action 'People in Motion' (EUR520,000). Key publications encompass 'Algiers on the Amstel: Portraying Thomas Hees’s Diplomatic Success in North Africa' (2023), 'Charting New Holland: Navigating the Interplay between Empirical Mapping and Imaginary Illustrations in 17th Century European Cartography' (2024), 'Good Vibrations. Mutual Love in Garofalo's Frescoes for Antonio Costabili' (2018), and contributions to 'VOC Collections: Scoping Report' (2025). Wattel curated 'First Encounters: Artist Interventions with the VOC Shipwrecks' (2025). He convenes the Research Cluster 'Entangled Histories of Emotions in the Mediterranean World,' coordinates the UWA History of Art Honours Program, and chaired the Sixteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society (2021).