Magdalena Grüner is a scholar of the entanglements of art and ocean science in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. She earned her PhD in art history from Universität Hamburg (Germany) She studied art history, philosophy, and design in Madrid, Vienna, and Hamburg. Her research has received generous support from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Princeton University Library, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Getty Research Institute, where she was a fellow in 2023/24 (Art and Technology). Before joining the USC Society of fellows, she was a scholar in residence at the German Museum of the Masterpieces of Science and Technology in Munich. 

In her current book project, tentatively titled Claiming Truth, Picturing Doubt: The Painted Epistemologies of the Bermuda Oceanographic Expeditions (1929-1940), Magdalena examines the visual objects and picturing practices of these expeditions, which gained prominence as the site of the first crewed deep-sea descents. The book brings together the fields of art history and the history of science through the methodological framework of critical ocean studies. This approach seeks to uncover the unruly and obscure aspects of past scientific activity, which in turn provide a rich source for rethinking present and future epistemologies through the ocean.