Alexandra Victoria Alvarez (Ava) builds her research from a simple premise: people are emotional beings living in an increasingly digital world.

She inquires what that means for how we experience art. At its center is aura, Walter Benjamin’s term for the presence of an original artwork, and the question of whether it survives reproduction. Her doctoral research, tests this through the FWF-funded OrDiV project with the Belvedere Research Center and the University for Continuing Education Krems, where Hanna Brinkmann serves as her external advisor. The project compares encounters with the same works as originals, digital images, augmented reality and virtual reality.

Alongside this, she leads an emotion-sharing project built with contemporary artists, tracing how the feelings an artist puts into a work reach the people who encounter it, and which viewers are most attuned to them.To capture these experiences as they happen, her studies combine fNIRS hyperscanning, which measures brain synchrony between artist and viewer, with mobile eye tracking in real museum and gallery settings, and a phenomenological experiences quantitative tool kit.

Fluent in Spanish and English, the Texas native has worked in museums and galleries since 2009, across the Americas and Europe, writing around 30 art reviews and exhibition texts and curating projects ranging from exhibitions and opera performances to art fair booths to fundraisers. She holds an MSc in Psychology of Arts, Neuroaesthetics and Creativity from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BA in Art History and the Science in Society Program from Wesleyan University. She has received the APA Division 10 Student Research Grant and an AKTION mobility grant, and presents regularly at international conferences including VSAC and IEAE.

Ava also serves as ARTIS Lab Media Manager, Early Career Researcher Ambassador, and is also a member of the Empirical Visual Aesthetics Lab. She consults privately and within the lab for incoming collaborations, coordinating research partnerships with international institutions and private businesses. She co-supervises master’s theses and reviews for Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Outside the lab, she runs AVA GANZA, a publication and fashion label. She has modeled for Chopova Lowena at London Fashion Week and performs in Mexico City.

alexandraalvarez.com · avaganza.world · ResearchGate · ORCID