Anja Novak is a historian of modern and contemporary art and theory, with a specific focus on installation art, performance and environmental art. Initially trained as a professional dancer, she obtained her PhD in art history from Leiden University with a dissertation on the performative spectatorship associated with installation art. Her research focuses on art that operates at the intersection of various disciplines, such as the visual arts, performance, architecture, landscape design, and heritage.

As a leading expert on land art in the Netherlands, she is interested in the geographical situatedness of art, in the changing connections between artworks and sites, and in how site-specific art contributes to the formation – and questioning – of identity. Another focus of her research is the way in which artworks trigger affective responses, and in particular how art can enable active engagement with traumatic aspects of the past. Her research is connected to affect theory, to the environmental humanities, and to ecological-enactive cognitive science. Recent publications include 'Engaging with art skillfully. First steps towards an ecological-enactive account of the experience of art' (co-authored with Erik Rietveld and Geerteke van Lierop, Adaptive Behavior, 2022), 'Broken Circle and Spiral Hill. Having entropy the Dutch way' (Holt Smithson Foundation, July 2020) and 'Affective spaces. Experiencing atmosphere in the visual arts' (Archimaera, November 2019).