Jemma Paek

Jemma Paek graduated from the University of Oxford in 2018 with a BA in Spanish and Russian, studying language and literature with a specialist paper on Literature and the Visual Arts. In 2020, Jemma returned to Oxford University to complete a Masters in Russian Literature and Culture, and was awarded the Modern and Medieval Languages Faculty Prize for Best Dissertation for a thesis interrogating queer storytelling and national identity in contemporary Georgian and Russian cinema. That same year, Jemma won the UK Sunday Times’ A.A. Gill Award for Emerging Food Critics for an article detailing working in a silver service restaurant on the eve of COVID’s first lockdown. Other food writing works have been published by The Guardian newspaper. Jemma is a co-founder of daikon* zine, a platform for the writing and art of South-East and East Asian women and non-binary people based in Europe. 

Jemma's dissertation investigates the role of sacred images in shaping theological and political discourse in early modern Eastern Europe. During 2026-2027, Jemma will be the Hanns Swarzenski and B. Horney Swarzenski Fellow in the Medieval Art Department at the Met Museum in New York.