Rico Franses is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts and Art History, AUB, and former chair of the department. He completed his PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London in the field of Byzantine art. He has also taught at The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, and Pratt Institute, New York. Research interests include: A) Interrelations between Late Antique, Byzantine and Islamic art. B) Monuments, memorials, and portraiture, especially in Byzantine and Renaissance art. C) Visual theory, especially psychoanalytic theory in its relation to the world of the visual.
Publications include “When all that is Gold does not Glitter: On the Strange History of Viewing Byzantine Art,” Icon and Word, eds. L. James and A. Eastmond, (Ashgate, 2003), and the translation of M-J Mondzain, Image, Icon, Economy. The Byzantine Origins of the Contemporary Imaginary (Stanford University Press, 2004).