PD Dr Angela Dreßen studied Art History at the University of Münster, where she did her Master's degree in 1996. In 2006, she also completed a Master in Library and Information Science at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 2005, Dreßen finished her doctorate in art history at the University of Trier, and in 2019 she completed her habilitation at the Technical University of Dresden, where she was appointed Privatdozentin.

From 1999-2005, Dreßen worked in the libraries of the Max Planck Institute in Rome and Florence, and since 2005 she has been working at the Bibliotheka Berenson (Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence).

Dreßen has been teaching at various universities since 2019. She was a visiting professor at the University of Vienna and a substitute professor at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. She has been working as a board member of the open access online journal Kunsttexte.de since 2014. Since 2015, she has represented the Renaissance Society of America (RSA), in 2022 she has chaired RSA Virtual 2022.

Dreßen took part in several fellowships, including two Library Fellowships at Harvard and Princeton University and a Global Fellowship in Digital Art History at the University of St Andrews. Her research interests include Renaissance art history, digital art history and library science (among others).

The list of publications can be found at https://tu-dresden.de/gsw/phil/ikm/kuge/der-fachbereich/Mitarbeiter/privatdozenten/pd-dr-habil-angela-dressen.