Jaś Elsner is a historian of Greek, Roman and early Christian art and archaeology, with interests in art history across Eurasia as well as the later historiography and receptions of ancient visual culture. Among his particular areas of expertise are the relations of art and text, especially issues in description (ekphrasis), questions of religion and material culture and especially the study of pilgrimage, and the early Buddhist art of ancient India. He was trained as a Classical philologist and archaeology in Cambridge and as a historian of art at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and has worked in the Courtauld and Oxford University, where he is currently Professor of Late Antique Art. Concurrently he has been Visiting Professor of Art and Religion at the University of Chicago since 2003 and Auswärtig Wissenschaftlich Mitgleid at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz since 2019. He has been a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2009 and a Fellow of the British Academy since 2017.
