John Webley

John Webley is a joint PhD candidate in Slavic Languages and Literature and History of Art. His dissertation, “Ink, Paint, and Blood: India and the Great Game in Russian Culture”, is a transmedial examination of Russia’s engagement with Britain and India during the 19th-century, which reframes the role of literature, material culture, and art in imagining the so-called “Great Game.” John holds a BA in Russian and Art History from Sarah Lawrence College and an MA from Columbia in Art History, where he wrote his thesis on the representation of jewelry in Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s royal portraits. Prior to enrolling at Yale, John worked as a Curatorial Associate at the Dahesh Museum of Art, where he assisted in cataloguing their permanent collection of Academic art. John was a 2019 recipient of the Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace at Middlebury College and in 2022 he was awarded a Yale Graduate Impact Fellowship to assist the department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in reviewing their collection of Ukrainian and Russian art. More recently, he has received the Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture’s Graduate Scholar Research Grant as well as funding from the MacMillan Center to support his dissertation research in London, Paris, New Delhi, and Helsinki.