Conversation with Lyla Halsted (AAHVS Assistant Professor)

Lyla Halsted, Ph.D., is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University. She specializes in medieval Islamic art and architecture, with a particular interest in material culture. Her research explores material culture as a nexus between practices of healing and protection rooted in magical and medical traditions, and their transformations from late antiquity to the fourteenth century. These themes are examined in her 2022 dissertation, “Seeking Refuge from the Envious: The Material Culture of the Evil Eye from Late Antiquity to Islam.”