Acting Professor Dr. Sarah Hegenbart

Dr Sarah Hegenbart is an art historian, curator, and philosopher whose research examines transcultural artistic practices in global contemporary art, with a particular focus on their critical interrogation of the epistemological foundations of the art-historical canon.

Prior to joining Heidelberg, she was a Lecturer at the Technical University of Munich and led a work package at the University of Oxford as part of the EU-funded Horizon 2020 project Art and Research on Transformations of Individuals and Societies. In addition, she held a number of curatorial positions, including College Curator of Art at Pembroke College, Oxford, and a role in the cultural section of the German Embassy in London, where she contributed to major international exhibition projects. Dr Hegenbart studied the history of art and philosophy in Berlin and Oxford, and completed her PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. Her doctoral research examined Christoph Schlingensief’s Operndorf Afrika as a postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk, combining theoretical analysis with fieldwork in Burkina Faso to explore the transcultural and political dimensions of participatory art. Her recent publications include From Bayreuth to Burkina Faso: Christoph Schlingensief’s Opera Village Africa as Postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk? (LUP, 2022) and Curating Transcultural Spaces: Perspectives on Postcolonial Conflicts in Museum Culture (Bloomsbury, 2024).

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