About
Originally from Ireland, Dr Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth is an art historian, curator and writer. She is Director of Global Premodern Art MSc and Lecturer in French and British History of Art, c.1650-1900 at the University of Edinburgh.
Caroline was previously Curator of Ceramics and Glass, 1600-1800, in the Department of Decorative Art and Sculpture at the Victoria & Albert Museum and Curator of The Chitra Collection, London. She is especially interested in celebrating women collectors and their histories and is an internationally-recognised expert in early modern European decorative arts and material culture. Caroline has curated exhibitions and displays at the V&A Museum, Stratford Library and the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan. She regularly collaborates with and lectures for museums, auction houses and historic collections across the world, including the Rijksmuseum, the Wallace Collection, the V&A, Scottish National Galleries, Doddington Hall, the National Trust, and Sotheby’s.
She holds a PhD from the University of Leeds, where she is still a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies. Caroline is currently writing two books, one on the art collector and philanthropist Lady Charlotte Schreiber, Extraordinary Art Collector with Lund Humphries (Fall, 2025), and the other entitled Sèvres-Mania: The Craft of Ceramics Connoisseurship with Bloomsbury Academic (Spring, 2026). She regularly works with BBC Scotland, BBC Radio 4, BBCHistoryExtra and her words appear in Apollo, Ceramic Review, BBC History, as well as in numerous scholarly journals.
