Valerie is an honorary Research Associate at Gresham College London (previously Registrar and Secretary of the College). Having studied at the Universities of Bristol, Manchester and the Witwatersrand, she has lectured extensively on Byzantine, Medieval and Renaissance art and architecture and published widely on the influence of astronomy and cosmology on art (including her PhD on the influence of Copernican heliocentricity on Michelangelo’s Sistine Last Judgment). After her main career in education management, she now works freelance, in order to pursue her writing and research (see: www.valerieshrimplin.com). She is former Chair of the series of Conferences on the Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena (www.insap.org). Author of many publications.