Professor Jean Brown | Associate Professor in Art Conservation
Jean was previously Head of Paper Conservation at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, prior to which she worked in the Western Pictorial Art section at the British Museum. Her research interests tend to focus on the sustainability, efficiency and effectiveness of procedures and systems in practice as well as teaching and learning and include: an evaporative cooling system that operates without the use of fossil fuels; issues concerning the care of contemporary art as well as distance and online learning.
https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/b/jean-brown
SoChing Wong 王素菁 | Tan See Bock PhD student (2020-2023)
SoChing Wong’s research aims to achieve an understanding of Buddhist bronze statues and their casting techniques in the Nanzhao and Dali Kingdoms, ancient Southwest China. With significant numbers of ancient Chinese bronze statues in the Woon Collection of Asian Art and other collections, her project will use a holistic approach to explore the histories and iconographies of the collection. In addition, by revealing the composition of the bronzewares, she will study their components, identify evidence for their manufacture and the influences on the technology used in the area, so as to implement the best approach to the care and conservation of these ancient Chinese bronzes for their sustainability and museum display.
https://research.northumbria.ac.uk/VisualMaterialCultures/?page_id=50
Dr. Charis Theodorakopoulos | Senior Lecturer in Art Conservation
Dr Theodorakopoulos is Programme Leader for the MA Conservation and Science Lead in the Department of Arts. He has employed laser-induced analysis, mass spectrometry, optical spectroscopy as well as thermal analysis to study a wide range of artist’s and heritage materials, including the study of paintings and the characterisation of dyes, binding media, paints and coatings. At TEI-A he developed novel cleaning materials for varnished and unvarnished tempera paints, murals and gilded panels with advanced gel formulations. He is collaborating with practicing conservators, conservation scientists, preventive conservation experts as well as scientists at diverse disciplines and sectors. He has contributed to a number of international research projects and he is member of national and international professional conservation bodies.
Previous posts include Research Fellowships at Birkbeck College, University of London (2004-2008) and at the IESL/FORTH (2011-2014) and Associate Scientist at the Department of Conservation, Athens University of Applied Sciences, Athens Greece (2007-2013). Funded Research include two AHRC CDPs: one with the V&A Museum (2017-2021) and one with Tate (2020-2024), an EU Partnership with XpectralTEK LDA (2017-2018, 2020), Industry funded projects with Blue Skies Lasers Ltd (2017-2020) an EU National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) (2013-2015). He supervises 3 PhD students as the primary supervisor: 2 UKRI funded PhD students and 1 RDF/externally match-funded PhD student.
https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-staff/t/dr-charis-theodorakopoulos
Dr. Richard Mulholland | Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow in Art Conservation
Dr Mulholland is Vice Chancellor’s Fellow in Art Conservation. His research covers the technical study of artists’ materials and, more recently, the conservation and safeguarding of cultural heritage at risk in conflict zones. He is a partner in HUNAR, a collaborative project involving research into current and future practices for cultural heritage preservation in post-conflict Afghanistan. He has spent time working with a number of collections on site in Kabul during projects funded by the British Council Cultural Protection Fund. He studied Art History at the University of Leicester and Conservation of Fine Art at Northumbria. He completed his PhD in 2010 at the Royal College of Art, London. Before joining Northumbria in 2019, he spent fifteen years as a museum Conservator, working for several museums, including the V&A, the Tate, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Harvard Art Museums.
www.northumbria.ac.uk/conservation | https://cultureincrisis.org/projects/conservation-of-conflict-damaged-paintings-at-the-afghan-national-gallery
Shichun Lei | Research Assistant
Shichun Lei has worked as a Research Assistant for the International Research Centre. He is presently based in Sichuan province in China and has MAs in History of Art from SOAS, University of London, and the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at Oxford University. He was responsible for researching and helping to construct a database of material from Nanzhao and Dali in museum collections around the world, researching and creating bibliographies of publications in Chinese and English, and helping to establish the research centre’s library at Northumbria University. He is particularly interested in the artistic and cultural development of Nanzhao and Dali’s Buddhist culture, especially the forces that influenced these cultures and how these Kingdoms in turn influenced neighbouring civilisations.