Associate

Delphine Poinsot is associate researcher at the Collège de France as a scientific collaborator of Professor Frantz Grenet, with the “History and cultures of pre-islamic central Asia” chair, (2022–2026). As an art historian specializing in ancient Iran, her research focuses primarily on animal iconography. Taking a praxeological approach that look for defining the full range of methods used to create images, her work combines archaeology and art history with the non-humans biological sciences. She focuses primarily on corpuses of seals and seal impressions and seeks to understand how animal imagery is used to express the socio-administrative ties reflected in these corpuses. Her research also encompasses the full range of artistic productions from Iran in Late Antiquity—silverware, stucco, rock reliefs, and textiles—with the aim of reintegrating the iconography of glyptic art into the broader context of image-making during that period. Finally, she applies iconographic analysis over the long term by studying images and forms from the Achaemenid period (556–330 BCE) through the first century of Islam, examining the phenomena of heritage and transmission.