Professor Hansen is a specialist in thirteenth-century French Gothic architectural sculpture. She received her PhD, focused on the sculpture of the cathedrals of Amiens, Bourges and Reims, from Indiana University Bloomington. Since moving permanently to Paris in 2016, she has become a nationally-certified tour guide and splits her time working in university settings and as a professional guide. In 2019, she began working with AUP teaching art history using the collections of Paris' museums. She has also taught courses focused on the restoration of Notre-Dame cathedral for Academic Programs International and has created custom multi-day study abroad programs for several US-based universities. As a guide, she works as a contractor for Context Travel -- one of the world's leading deep travel tour companies -- and also manages her own private tour guiding business (lindseyhansenguide.com). She spends her days guiding in some of the world's most illustrious museums, including the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, and the Sainte-Chapelle. She also leads a variety of walking tours of the neighborhoods and monuments of Paris. Though her PhD focuses on medieval art history, she now considers herself a specialist of the city of Paris, its history, its monuments, and its art.
When she is not teaching, Dr. Hansen continues to research Gothic architecture and sculpture. She is currently preparing an article on the north portal sculpture of the church of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, and is in the beginning stages of a project exploring the importance of 19th-century restoration for understanding medieval buildings in France.
Dr. Hansen's research areas include Gothic sculpture, Gothic architecture, hagiography, the transformations of Paris under Napoleon III, and museology.
Education/Degrees
PhD, Art History, Indiana University Bloomington; MA, Art Theory and Criticism, Stony Brook University; BA, Art History and French, Colorado State University; License Professionnelle Guide-Conférencier, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
News
“A New Chapter in the History of Notre-Dame de Paris,” The International Center of Medieval Art Responds to the Fire at Cathédrale Notre-Dame, April 2019
“Reconstructing Notre-Dame de Paris,” Le pouvoir caché des matériaux, a Saint Gobain podcast, July 2019
Publications
Constructing Episcopal Authority Through Hagiography and Ritual in the Honoré Portal at Amiens Cathedral,” The Memory of the Bishop in Medieval Cathedrals: Ceremonies and Visualizations, ed. Gerardo Boto Varela, Isabel Escandell, and Esther Lozano Lopez (Wein: Peter Lang, 2019).
Editor and contributor, “The Lordship and Commune Project: A Collaboratory,” ed. Janet Marquardt, Nina Rowe, Jennifer Feltman, and Lindsey Hansen.
“Sculpture, Ritual and Episcopal Identity in the Saints Portal at Reims Cathedral,” in The North Transept of Reims Cathedral: Design, Construction and Visual Programs, ed. Jennifer Feltman (New York: Routledge, 2016), 141-60.
“Acts of Witnessing: The Munich Ivory of the Ascension, Medieval Visuality and Pilgrimage,” Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies 7 (November 2011)
