A Decisive Moment for Skin Studies: The Founding of AENEAS (The European Society for Dermatoiconography and the Arts)
August 18, 2025, marked a decisive moment in the interdisciplinary field of Skin Studies with the establishment of AENEAS (The European Society for Dermatoiconography and the Arts). Situated at the intersection of cultural and literary studies, art history, and dermatology, AENEAS is dedicated to fostering new European synergies in future skin research across disciplinary boundaries.
What can the humanities learn from dermatological clinical practice – and what, in turn, can dermatology learn from the humanities? How do artistic and cultural representations of skin shape, challenge, and even change the ways in which we perceive, experience, and speak about our own skin, and about skin more broadly? These questions stand at the very beginning of a collaboration that started as an open and inspiring conversation among a small group of humanities scholars and practicing dermatologists in Copenhagen. What began as an exploratory exchange quickly grew into a serious, shared commitment to sustained, interdisciplinary collaboration. Curiosity about each other’s ways of working and thinking culminated in the first international, interdisciplinary initiative of its kind in May 2025: the inaugural ‘Copenhagen Skin Day’. The event was devoted entirely to exploring the visual, cultural, and clinical dimensions of skin. It brought together over fifty participants from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds and was an immediate success. The vibrant and intellectually curious atmosphere was evident throughout the six micro-lectures and the keynote address by Nina Jablonski, a leading biological anthropologist internationally recognized for her work on skin and skin pigmentation.
Fig. 1. Irina Hron (AENEAS’ President) and Gregor Jemec (AENEAS’ Vice President)
This first event already demonstrated the remarkable potential for collaboration between medicine and the humanities to enrich both fields. The organizers quickly realized that this was the beginning of an ongoing conversation with the potential to reshape interdisciplinary cooperation around skin. Accordingly, the next Copenhagen Skin Day is already in the planning stages and scheduled to take place on October 30, 2026.
The inaugural Copenhagen Skin Day did more than launch the international platform Dermato-Iconography Forum. First and foremost, it served as the starting point for establishing the first European Society for Dermatoiconography and the Arts. AENEAS will officially begin its work on January 1, 2026. Irina Hron, Director of Dermacriticism and AENEAS’ first elected President, emphasizes the significance of this step and the promise of collaboration across such disciplines as dermatology, art history, science communication, and literary and cultural studies:
“Human skin is not only the most visible biological organ; it is also one of the most complex in terms of the number of disciplines devoted to it. So far, no single discipline has been able to do justice to all of these aspects at once. The recent emergence of the interdisciplinary field of Skin Studies demonstrates the urgent need for a shared platform that brings together this dispersed knowledge. AENEAS takes the first step in this direction.”
Together with her Executive Board – comprising internationally renowned dermatologist Gregor Jemec (Vice President), experienced science communicator and dermatologist Iben Miller (Head of Educational Curation), art historian and curator Edward Payne (Head of Communications and Media Relations), and senior physician Henrik Lorentzen (Head of Liaisons) – Hron aims to provide an open forum for intellectual exchange among skin scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. As Iben Miller puts it: “Dermatology meets the arts? Although this interdisciplinary field has an abstract, imaginative, and almost futuristic quality, it isn’t science fiction. It’s a call to rethink how we train the clinical diagnostic gaze and how visual literacy can become diagnostic power.”
Fig. 2. AENAS Executive Board (Gregor Jemec, Iben Miller, Nina Jablonski, Irina Hron, Edward Payne)
Looking ahead, AENEAS seeks to establish a common framework for understanding how contemporary scientific, medical, cultural, and artistic approaches are reshaping our fundamental conception of what human skin is and does. And this, unmistakably, is only the beginning.
Irina Hron & Edward Payne, January 2026
AENEAS – Executive board
- Irina Hron, President (Copenhagen, Literary Scholar and Director of Dermacriticism)
- Gregor Jemec, Vice-President (Copenhagen, Dermatologist)
- Henrik Lorentzen, Head of Liaisons (Odense, Dermatologist)
- Iben Miller, Head of Educational Curation (Copenhagen, Dermatologist)
- Edward Payne, Head of Communications and Media Relations (Aarhus, Art Historian)
- Sura Alkinani, Secretary General (Copenhagen, Medical Student)