Dr Elisa deCourcy is a art historian with a broad interest in the use and development of visual technologies mainly during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She was awarded her PhD in 2014 for a thesis that examined the photography of early twentieth century English explorers in Africa and Central Asia. After her doctorate was conferred, she worked as a curatorial intern in the photography department of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and as the research officer for the Centre for Media History at Macquarie University. She is currently the Research Fellow on the Heritage in the Limelight: The Magic Lantern in Australia and the world ARC Discovery Project run out of ANU School of Art and Design. Elisa is particularly interested in photography and cross cultural masquerade, photography and transmission, and nineteenth century visual experimentation and appropriation. She has spoken and published about her research in Australia and abroad. In 2018 she was awarded a Harry Ransom Fellowship from the University of Texas at Austin. Along with Martyn Jolly she is working on an extended project about the global career of daguerreotypist and magic lanternist James William Newland (1810-1857).