Kelli Wood is the Dale G. Cleaver Asst. Professor of Art History – Museum & Curatorial Studies at the University of Tennessee. Wood’s research on the visual and material culture of games and sports spanning from Renaissance board games to contemporary video games has been published in journals such as Art History, Renaissance Studies, Art Libraries journal, and in edited volumes and art magazines. Her book based on her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and work as a postdoctoral scholar in the Michigan Society of Fellows, Games and Sports in Renaissance Italy: The Art of Play (Routledge, 2026), is available for pre-order: https://www.routledge.com/Games-and-Sports-in-Renaissance-Italy-The-Art-of-Play/Wood/p/book/9789463723749. Wood was recognized as an Outstanding Young Alumna by her alma mater the University of Florida in 2017 and through an Early Career Excellence in Research award by the University of Tennessee College of Arts and Sciences in 2022.

Wood turned toward the global when she curated a permanent gallery of the 3-2-1 Qatar Olympic and Sports Museum, A Global History of Sport, which debuted in 2022 for the FIFA World Cup in Doha. Recently, her scholarly projects have focused on craft in Goa based on her research as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar to India in 2022-2023 and as an and an Affiliated Fellow at the American Academy in Rome in 2025. This work resulted in the exhibition and associated book publication, Makers & Materials: Goa Past and Present, co-curated with Leandre d’Souza at the Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts (Dec. 6, 2025 – Feb. 28, 2026) which was acclaimed by The Times of India. Makers & Materials features the creative practice of 15 contemporary artists responding to the long history of craft media in Goa and the Konkan coast, and their essays in the book are available through Amazon: https://www.amazon.in/Makers-Materials-Goa-Past-Present/dp/8196627041.

In 2024 Wood held a Berenson fellowship at Harvard’s Villa I Tatti Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and that research is forthcoming as a book, Early Modern Goa: A Cosmopolis of Craft, which is under contract with Cambridge University Press in their Renaissance Elements series.

Trans-historical approaches to the study of games and sports are an area of intellectual interest for Wood, and she is currently working on digitizing board games from Renaissance Italy to become playable video games, a project which began when she was a NEH-Mellon fellow for Digital Publication in 2021-2022. At the University of Tennessee Wood is a co-convener of the Denbo Center faculty research seminar on Digital Games: https://humanitiescenter.utk.edu/seminar/digital-games/ and teaches the course ARTH 356 Video Game Art which introduces students to the intersecting aesthetic and technological history of video games through hands on lab work with consoles and platforms from the Atari 2600 onward. In the fall of 2026 Wood will offer a new undergraduate course, ART 110 Stadium to Superbowl: The Athletic Arts, in which students will explore the visual and material culture of sports and games from antiquity through the present, including through topics such as the body and the ideal athlete, the development of the stadium and spectacular sport, medieval knightly combat, the codification of sport in modernity, the revival of the Olympics, and the visual culture of contemporary football. Wood is an affiliated faculty member with the Center for Sport, Peace, and Society: https://cehhs.utk.edu/sportandpeace/our-team/.

Rigorous art historical method, affordances through digital humanities, and theoretical and practical applications of curatorial studies are cornerstones of Wood’s pedagogy. Wood serves as the coordinator for the School of Art’s majors in Art History and Museum & Curatorial Studies; interested students can contact her at kwood29@utk.edu.

Beyond the University of Tennessee Wood also serves the College Art Association as Field Editor – Early Modern (South) for caa.reviews, the Italian Art Society as Executive Vice President, and on the board of The New Art Examiner magazine.