Shima Karimi is a PhD student studying Andean visual art in the early modern period, with interests in iconography, hybridity and indigeneity. She holds a BA in Spanish Language and Literature from University of Tehran and a MA in Latin American cultural and Literary Studies from Ohio State University. Her MA thesis was entitled “chumpi as secular sacred material at hand in colonial resistance”, where she studied the cultural preservation of the Andean belt (or chumpi in Quechua) in the face of destruction in the context of Spanish colonialism.