Elizabeth Sears is an art historian specializing in medieval art and iconography. Her first book, The Ages of Man: Medieval Interpretations of the Life Cycle (Princeton, 1986), won the John Nicholas Brown Prize from the Medieval Academy of America. She has also edited and contributed essays to Edgar Wind, The Religious Symbolism of Michaelangelo: The Sistine Ceiling (Oxford, 2000) and Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian and the Object (Michigan, 2002).

Sears has received a number of research fellowships, from such institutions as the Getty Research Institute and the British School at Rome, and has twice been a visiting fellow at Oxford University. In addition, she has been the editor of Gesta, the journal published by the International Center of Medieval Art, and has served on the Center’s board of directors. Sears has taught art history at Princeton University, the University of Hamburg, and currently, at the University Michigan, where she has been since 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from Duke University and later earned her PhD from Yale University.