Nazar Kozak is an art historian who studies both medieval and the contemporary art. In the field of medieval art, Kozak focuses on the intersection of visual culture and politics, as well as the mobility of religious iconography within the (post-)Byzantine world. His book Image and Authority: Royal Portraits in the Art of Kyivan Rus in the Eleventh Century (Lviv, 2007) examines the role of visual images in the political struggles of the past. In contemporary art studies, Kozak investigates the agency of art in moments of social crisis, including revolutions, wars, and ecological disasters. His 2017 article on art interventions during the Ukrainian Maidan Revolution received an honorable mention as a finalist for the College Art Association’s Art Journal Award.

Kozak studied Art History at the Lviv Academy of Arts, where he also defended his PhD in 2000. Since 1999, he has been affiliated with the Art History Department of the Ethnology Institute, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, where he currently serves as Senior Researcher. From 2001 to 2022, he also taught art history as an Associate Professor at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. His research has been supported by numerous international fellowships and grants, including those from the Fulbright Scholar Program, Getty Research Institute (GRI), American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), CAA-Getty Scholar Program, Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), Österreichs Agentur für Bildung und Internationalisierung (OeAD), and Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM). Currently, Kozak is Philipp Schwartz Initiative (PSI) Fellowship at KIT.