Andaleeb received her Ph.D. from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts and specializes in Renaissance and Baroque art of Europe. She is presently a member of the Drawings and Prints department at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York, but has also taught at various higher education institutions in the New York area, including Vassar College and the City University of New York. She received a Fulbright scholarship as well as a fellowship from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she worked in the European Paintings department for four years. Her love for art has led to her travel extensively throughout Europe and Asia.

A native New Yorker, James earned his M.S. in Historic Preservation with a concentration in architectural preservation at the University of Pennsylvania. He began his career at the New York Landmarks Conservancy, and has continued to work in the field of architectural preservation in New York for over a decade. Presently, he is a project manager at Walter B. Melvin Architects and has worked on the restoration of numerous buildings in New York City buildings. James is also involved with the international cultural heritage preservation community. He completed an internship in Jaisalmer, India, with the International Council of Monuments and Sites, and worked as a consultant for the World Monuments Fund in Cochin, India.

With an undergraduate degree in architectural studies from Connecticut College in tow, Emma Bowen moved to New York City in 2001. A lover of all things aesthetically-inspiring, Emma continues to marvel at the built representations of urban (and not so urban) life from her neighborhood in Brooklyn, as well as through her Master’s program in the history of decorative arts and design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in partnership with Parsons The New School for Design. A former educator for New York’s Lower East Side Tenement Museum and research fellow in Cooper-Hewitt’s Department of Drawings, Prints, and Graphic Design, Emma is currently conducting her Master’s thesis research on the domestic architecture and spaces of nomadic Roma communities in Eastern Europe.

Helen Burnham, Ph.D. is a scholar of nineteenth-century French art. She received her doctorate from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts where she wrote her dissertation on Edouard Manet. While completing her graduate work in Paris, Helen led walks of the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, and Haussmannian Paris for Context. Now in New York, she continues to enjoy introducing visitors to the best of New York's artistic and cultural life.

Emily Carrus received her Grand Diploma in Pastry Arts from the French Culinary Institute in New York City, gained industry experience in one of the city's top-rated restaurants, and currently works as a bread and pastry baker at a celebrated artisan bakery on NY's Upper West Side. A former magazine editor and writer who studied Communication at Tulane University, Emily carried her communications skills with her into the food world, contributing to PastryScoop.com as its resident blogger.

Becky earned her Master's degree in urban history from the University of Leicester, UK where she wrote her thesis on nineteenth-century city planning and its social implications, research that now informs her wanderings through New York. A freelance writer and researcher, she has contributed to publications like Time Out New York and The Boston Globe.

Kira Foerster is currently working on her MS in anthropology and archaeology at Purdue University, where her focus is on the Roman military during the Roman Republican era in the Balearic Islands. She has broad field experience in archaeology, having excavated in Menorca, Ireland, and New York. Additionally, she has participated in paleontological digs in Montana. A native New Yorker, Kira has interned at the New York State Museum in Albany and has recently returned to the city to work at the South Street Seaport Museum in their New York Unearthed urban archaeology museum

Moses Gates is an Urban Planner working in housing, transportation, and demography of New York. He holds a Masters in Urban Planning from Hunter College, and has been giving tours of the hidden and unknown spaces of New York since 2003. His love of the hidden and unknown aspects of cities has lead him from the rooftops of Sao Paulo to the sewers of Rome.

Ethan Greenbaum received his MFA in painting from Yale University. He is a working artist who exhibits his work regularly in New York and abroad. He is a co-founder and frequent contributor to The Highlights (www.thehighlights.org), a website devoted to artist writings and projects. Ethan teaches art, design and art history at various universities in New York and the surrounding area including the Pratt Institute and Tyler school of Art. He also regularly leads tours in the Chelsea gallery district for Columbia University students. He is a recipient of the Barry Schactman Painting Prize and the Edward Albee Foundation Residency. Ethan lives and works in Brooklyn.

Matico Josephson has been a student of New York's built environment for as long as he can remember, and an explorer of the city's nooks and crannies for even longer. His curiosity has found an outlet in the History of Architecture, in which he has recently been pursuing a Ph.D. at NYU's Institute of Fine Arts. He will prepare a dissertation on modern architecture in Spain.

Lorraine Karafel is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, specializing in the art, architecture and social history of 16th-century Europe. She spent 2006 as a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome researching her dissertation on the painter Raphael and his designs for tapestries and interior decoration. Lorraine has taught at Rutgers University and Parsons School of Design in New York and Paris and has held curatorial and research positions at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where she currently works.

Cathy Kaufman is a trained chef and food historian with extensive experience in the food world in New York and beyond. After working as an attorney in New York for more than a decade, Cathy gained multiple degrees in cooking from Peter Kump's New York Cooking School and the School for American Chefs at Beringer Vineyards, California. She has worked in catering and restaurants in New York, and has been on the faculty at the Institute of Culinary Education. Since the late 1990s, she has written and taught extensively on the history of cuisine, including numerous articles for the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. She is senior editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America and author of the recently published Cooking in Ancient Civilizations (Greenwood Press).

Miru Kim is a New York-based artist who has explored various urban ruins such as abandoned subway stations, tunnels, sewers, catacombs, factories, hospitals, and shipyards. She was featured as one of the America's Best and Brightest 2007 in Esquire magazine. Her work has appeared in various other media such as The New York Times, The Financial Times, Time Out New York, The Korea Daily, La Stampa, JoongAng Daily, Dong-A Daily, HDNet TV, ProSieben, New York Times Upfront, Yen Magazine, AnimalNewYork.com, Gothamist.com, and in many shows in NYC and Berlin. Miru was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts in 1981 but was raised in Seoul, Korea. She moved back to Massachusetts in 1995 to attend Phillips Academy in Andover, and moved to New York City in 1999 to attend Columbia University. In 2006, she received an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute. She is also the founder of Naked City Arts, LLC, which is dedicated to helping other young artists and bringing art to the Lower Manhattan.

Seungjung Kim is currently working on her Ph.D. in art history and archaeology at Columbia University, where her area of expertise is Greek art. She has extensive experience as an archaeologist in the field, working in Sicily, and as a researcher and teacher at such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Barnard College, and the University of Virginia. Originally from Seoul, Korea, Seungjung also holds a doctorate in astrophysics from Princeton University.

A certified English Tea Master, Knight studied with Edward Bramah, executive director of Bramah Tea & Coffee Museum, and completed the Whittard Tea Course and Examination, London, England. She is a member of the Culinary Historians of New York, Slow Food International and the Specialty Tea Institute. In addition to her many books on tea, including the recently published guide to tea in New York ("Tea in the City"), Elizabeth is a frequent contributor to such magazines as TeaTime, Romantic Homes, Tea & Coffee Asia, and Tea A Magazine. Knight is the former tea sommelier for the historic St. Regis Hotel and current tea consultant for the Peninsula Hotel. She regularly speaks to national retailers including Bloomingdale’s and Marshall Fields, cultural institutions including The British National Trust, historical and botanical societies including The Missouri Botanical Garden and schools including New York University. As spokesperson for the 40th anniversary of Royal Doulton’s china pattern, Old Country Roses, she created and presented consumer programs in stores across the U.S.

Page Knox is a Ph.D. candidate in the art history department at Columbia University, specializing in late-nineteenth century American painting. She is currently finishing her dissertation on the relationship between print media and the rise of aestheticism in America during the Gilded Age. Page has worked at the Yale British Art Center and taught at Columbia and Barnard Colleges. She is also involved with a number of art institutions in Greenwich, Connecticut where she resides with her family.

Alexandra Leaf is a culinary historian and cookbook author. She writes for a variety of publications including The Philadelphia Daily News, Gastronomica and Country Living and most recently SAVEUR. She has been featured on radio and television, including NPR and CNN, and in such print media as The New York Times, Food and Wine, and Travel and Leisure. Alexandra is a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier International; is a board member of The New York Food Museum; and is former chair of Culinary Historians of New York. Alexandra holds a Masters’ degree in Comparative Literature from NYU and speaks fluent French and Italian. In 1992, she was awarded a Soros Foundation Teaching Fellowship and in 2002 was cited for her outstanding contribution to the James Beard Foundation. Her award-winning (IACP) cookbook “Van Gogh’s Table at the Auberge Ravoux” (Artisan Books, 2001) has just been reissued in paperback. In 2002, the French edition of the book was published by Hoebecke. Alexandra’s first book, “The Impressionists’ Table: Recipes and Gastronomy of 19th Century France” was published in 1994 by Rizzoli International. Alexandra is a well-known expert on chocolate and is the principal organizer of the 92nd St. Y’s annual World Chocolate Extravaganza. She lectures around the country on the history, manufacture and appreciation of fine chocolate. In addition, she teaches tasting classes at the Institute for Culinary Education and at the 92nd St. Y in New York City where she resides.

Lia is a recipient of a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship to finish her PhD in art history at the University of Chicago. She is currently living in NYC where she is writing her dissertation on the collection and representation of the Americas at the Medici court in the sixteenth century.

After completing a master's degree in art history at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Rosie worked in the field of museum education for eight years. Here she was able to escape teaching with slides in a dark classroom, and had the opportunity to teach in galleries in front of the art works and found not only was it a better experience for her, but also a richer experience for the students. A few years ago she returned to school to pursue a PhD. in art history at Temple University in Philadelphia. She teaches Italian Renaissance and Baroque art history and is thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Context in both Rome and New York and teach in the churches and galleries where many of the great works of art of her favorite periods are found.

Ara H. Merjian is the Visiting Assistant Professor and Lauro de Bosis Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University for 2008-9, and Assistant Professor of Italian Studies and Art History at New York University. In addition to teaching on the centenary of the founding of Italian Futurism, he currently is finishing a book manuscript, Urban Untimely: Giorgio de Chirico and the Metaphysical City, which examines de Chirico's early Metaphysical cityscapes in the light of Nietzschean philosophy. A former Fulbright scholar to Italy and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery, Ara received his B.A. from Yale University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught at Berkeley and Stanford Universities, and is a regular critic for Modern Painters, Artforum online, and Frieze. Ara has collaborated with Context since its earliest days in Rome and Paris.

Ken Ovitz holds multiple degrees and certificates in culinary history and food preparation from The New School University, The Institute of Culinary Education, and the State of New York. He is an expert on Jewish cuisine and religious feasts, and has written numerous articles for the Jewish Voice Newspaper and contributed scholarly papers on the history of Jewish cuisine, the seder, and kosher rules at a variety of conferences.

Manu Radhakrishnan is a PhD candidate at Princeton in medieval European history. He spent 2006 in Rome researching his dissertation and working as a docent for Context Rome, where he was praised for his fantastic teaching style. He is currently in New York City, writing his dissertation, and leading walks to the Cloisters and other sites of religious art.

Sonia is currently working on her Ph.D. in art history and archaeology at Columbia University. She specializes in Greek art and archaeology, but also has a strong interest in Etruscan art. Sonia is a practicing archaeologist and has conducted archaeological fieldwork in Italy (Sicily and Tuscany) and Spain. She has taught at Barnard and Columbia and is writing her dissertation on Ampurias, a Greek settlement in Spain.

Lindsey is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, where she specializes in the art and architecture of 16th- and 17th-century Europe, with particular emphasis on Italy. She has worked at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She just finished a fellowship sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum to conduct research for her dissertation on the Baroque painter and architect, Pietro da Cortona, in Rome. While in Rome she worked for Context Rome, winning acclaim for her teaching style and abilities.

Eve Straussman-Pflanzer is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. She has worked as a research assistant and docent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. She spent 2006 in Florence on a Rousseau fellowship researching the role of women in the Medici court and leading walks for Context Florence.

Elizabeth Thompson Colleary holds master's degrees in art history and art education and has taught art history and museum education courses at the College of New Rochelle for twenty-eight years. At present she also works as a consultant to the Edward and Josephine Nivison Hopper Research Collection, housed in the library at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. She brought in foundation funding to create the Research Collection in 2001 and has worked on archivally re-housing the Hopper papers and cataloguing all of Jo’s work at the museum since then. She also conducted interviews with Hopper family friends in Florida for an oral history project undertaken by the Whitney, and her commentary on the Hopper marriage was included on the Audio Guide created for the installation of Hopper’s work in the recent Full House 75th anniversary exhibition at the Whitney. Thompson Colleary has also curated numerous exhibitions and published articles on women artists, most recently an article on some newly discovered works by Jo Hopper in the Spring 2004 edition of the Woman's Art Journal. After locating Jo’s work in 2000 she helped to organize an exhibit of her watercolors at the Truro Historical Museum and arranged for her work to be included in the Thoroughly Modern, “New Women” Art Students of Robert Henri exhibition held at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art in 2005, and the Edward Hopper in Charleston exhibition at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC in 2006, where she also took part in a panel discussion entitled “Partners in Art: The Creative Relationship” about two-artist marriages. Thompson Colleary is in the process of writing two books, one on Edward Hopper’s depictions of women and another about Jo, her art, and the Hopper marriage.

Ed Wouk is currently a doctoral candidate in the Fine Arts at Harvard University. His area of focus is on the artistic relations between the Low Countries and Italy in the Renaissance, and his dissertation focuses on the oeuvre of one of the foremost of these so-called "Fiamminghi a Roma." Ed is a native New Yorker and has studied and taught New York history extensively. He's also lived extensively in Belgium and the Netherlands and is equally conversant in the art and theory of the Renaissance and Baroque periods in the North and in Italy.

Sarah is a native Californian who holds a B.A. from U.C. San Diego and an M.A. from the University of Sheffield, England. Her research, in collaboration with the C.N.R.S in Aix-en-Provence, was a study of cultural and religious syncretism in the ancient Roman provinces. Her studies brought her to France and England before finally setting her in Rome in 2002. Sarah is a certified archaeological speleologist with the city of Rome, and appears as an interviewed expert on the History Channel’s “Cities of the Underworld� series. She has consulted with National Geographic television and is a contributing writer at Archeology Magazine. When she is not teaching or writing, Sarah can generally be found haunting her favorite art galleries in the city, where she researches the revival of antiquity in the Renaissance and the role of the Church in the development of science.

EY Zipris holds dual Masters degrees in education and museum anthropology from Teacher's College and Columbia respectively. She currently works at the City Museum of New York, and thus has deep and broad knowledge of the city and its history.