Sabrina Higgins

Areas of interest

Late antique studies, archaeology, art history, Marian studies, religious transformation, sacred landscapes, Church history, early Christianity, gender and agency theory, late antique Monasticism, eastern Christianity, and material culture of religion.

Actively accepting MA students interested in:
Early Christian Art
Classical and Late Antique Archaeology (especially Egypt, Greece and the Balkans)
The Early Cult of the Virgin Mary
Late Antique Monasticism
Digital Humanities

Education

• PhD, Religious Studies, University of Ottawa
• MA, Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, University of British Columbia
• BA (honours), Classics and Religious Studies, Univeristy of Ottawa

Biography

Sabrina Higgins is a field archaeologist and art historian cross appointed between the Departments of Humanities and Archaeology. Her work is inherently multidisciplinary, intersecting the fields of Late Antique Studies, Archaeology, Religious Studies, Art History, Papyrology, and Gender Studies. At present, her research is largely situated in the field of Marian studies, specifically the ways in which we can use material culture to understand the development and spread of the early cult of the Virgin Mary. More broadly, she is also interested in the ways in which art and space interact within Late-Antique Christianity religious structures and the manner in which art is used by socially-marginalized populations to exert agency. Her research is also grounded in the Digital Humanities and Public Scholarship, as a founding member of the Digital Mary Project (an open-access collection of material culture related to the Virgin Mary in the Eastern Mediterannean) and Peopling the Past (a Digital Humanities initiative that produces and hosts free, open-access resources for teaching and learning about real people in the ancient world).