Melissa Venator's research interests include modern and contemporary art, specifically in 1920s Germany. Her dissertation, Light Play: Light Art in 1920s Germany, directed by Graham Bader was completed in 2016. In the same year, she began a two-year curatorial fellowship at Harvard's Busch-Reisinger Museum, where she will be contributing to an exhibition and international conference celebrating the centennial of the founding of the Bauhaus and its legacy in the United States.