The year-long Pre-doctoral Position at the KHI will enable Marian's investigation of the adaptive nature of city planning seen in material culture and the built environment in Sicily, utilizing the KHI library and its connections to other academic institutions in eastern Sicily. The purpose of her research is to connect the developing Baroque urban environment after natural disasters devastated cities in the Mediterranean and beyond, contributing to her larger dissertation project titled “Ruined and Rebuilt: Constructing the Ideal Baroque City after Natural Disasters.” Of particular interest to her dissertation research is the colonializing role of Sicily in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, specifically the role the cities in the Val di Noto played post-destruction after 1693, in a period that promoted architectural renewal as both idealized architectural and a sign of good governance. Between correspondence depicting catastrophes, the dissemination of these images in contemporary travel journals, and the idealized city plans created to impress Enlightened patrons, her research topic centers disasters in the history of art that are a focus for Department Wolf.