Christina is a third-year PhD candidate from Greece and has been with the ARTIS Lab since August 2022. Her research is centered around death anxiety, meaning in life and (abstract) art.

Christina Makri has an MPhil in Biological Science (Psychology) from the University of Cambridge (Brain, Language and Bilingualism Lab). Her Master’s thesis was focused on examining the differences in auditory perception between monolingual and bilingual speakers. While in Cambridge, she was also a writer for the ‘Varsity’ magazine and the LucyWritersPlatform. She has also taken courses at MIT on Philosophy and Abstract Concepts (e.g. Paradoxes and Infinity).

Her current academic research focus is death anxiety and art, specifically the ways in which fear of death can be reduced through (abstract) art. Among other things, her research so far has shown that a negative relationship between liking of abstract art and death anxiety levels does seem to exist (i.e. liking of abstract art is associated with lower death anxiety levels). To further examine people’s relationship with the notion of death and its link to art, she has carried out museum studies (e.g. investigating the effects of a mortality salient exhibition - ‘Being Mortal’ at the Dom Museum in Vienna - in prosociality, environmentally conscious consumption, self-reflection etc.). Studies with chronically and terminally ill individuals and their relationship to both death and art have also been carried out (in the Oncology Department of the Alexandra General Hospital in Athens, Greece). The eventual aim of her PhD is to develop art-based interventions that connect us to our mortality and help address our fear of it. Concurrently, she is a professor at the American College of Greece.

Christina has participated and presented her research in numerous conferences, such as the International Conference on Beauty and Change (Turin, 2024), the European Conference on Positive Psychology (Innsbruck, 2024), the International Conference on Humanities & Arts (Athens, 2025), the Modernism Remodelled Conference (Cambridge, 2025) and the Cognition, Behaviour and Neuroscience Academy (Vienna, 2023 & 2025).

Finally, Christina loves music and visual art and has showcased her paintings in various galleries across Cambridge, Athens and Santorini. She has a particular soft spot for Hugo Simberg’s “Garden of Death”, Mark Rothko’s “Seagram Murals”, as well as Edward Burne-Jones’ “The Legend of Briar Rose” series.

Links

https://lucywritersplatform.com/author/christina-makri/

https://www.acg.edu/undergraduate/faculty/