Michael Diers, art historian and critic, is Professor for Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg and Extraordinary Professor for Art History at the Humboldt University of Berlin; Professor emeritus since 2017. In 2017/2018 he is a Getty Research Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. His research focuses on Renaissance Art, modernism and contemporary art, photography and new media, art und media theory, political iconography and history of science. He has written many essays and books on the aforementioned topics. He is co-editior of the Collected Writings of Aby Warburg and was the longstanding editor of the paperback series „kunststück“ and „Fundus“. In addition, he works as a freelance writer for the German newspapers “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, „Süddeutsche Zeitung”, “Die ZEIT“ and „Neue Zürcher Zeitung“.

He has been invited by INHA and the Centre Allemand d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, as a guest scholar in 2001 to do research on political iconography, specifically on the topic of the destruction of monuments

„Warburg aus Briefen“ (1991), „Schlagbilder. Zur politischen Ikonographie der Gegenwart“ (1997), „Hans Haacke, Der Bevölkerung’“ (2000, co-editor), „Film, Fotografie, Video. Beiträge zu einer kritischen Theorie des Bildes“ (2006), „Topos Atelier. Werkstatt und Wissensform“ (2009, co-editor); „Das Interview. Formen und Funktionen des Künstlergesprächs seit Vasari“ (2013, co-editor); “Max Liebermann: Die Kunstsammlung. Von Rembrandt bis Manet” (co-editor, 2013); “Vor aller Augen. Studien zu Kunst, Bild und Politik” (2016); “Focus on Blow-Up. Die Gegenwart der Bilder bei Antonioni“ (co-editor, 2018); „O Superman. Gedanken über Film, Kunst, Politik (und Lehre), (editor, 2019); „Mary Warburg. Porträt der Künstlerin. Leben und Werk“(co-author, 2020); forthcoming „Aby Warburg, Briefe (co-editor, 2021)