Alisha Ma (LSE) - 2025-26 Students
a.e.ma@lse.ac.uk

Aesthetic Experience and Colonial Worldmaking in Queen Mary II's Collection Spaces at Hampton Court Palace and Kensington Palace

Alisha’s PhD project explores the construction of colonial ideologies and aesthetics in late seventeenth-century England through a case study of Queen Mary II’s porcelain cabinets at Kensington Palace as well as her Water Gallery and ‘Exoticks’ Garden at Hampton Court Palace. Situated in the context of the Glorious Revolution and England’s emergence as a global imperial power, the project draws on diverse perspectives and methodologies across global, cultural, and art history to highlight the importance of this period in the development of colonial narratives and worldviews across Europe – particularly in England and the Anglo-Dutch empires. She is interested in understanding how gender, space, visual and material culture all functioned as instruments of coloniality at the hands of European collectors, consumers, designers, and craftspeople.

Primary supervisor: Dr Paul Stock