Symposium Speaker Biographies

Valentin Boissonnas (*1972) was trained in the conservation of archaeological and ethnographic objects at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London and has an MA in the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas from the University of East Anglia. He worked for many years as a metals conservator at the Swiss National Museum, is an independent conservator and researcher in Zurich and has been a lecturer in conservation at the Haute Ecole Arc Conservation-Restauration in Neuchâtel (CH) for the last 25 years.

His teaching activities have taken him to the Netherlands, the USA, Egypt and South Africa and he has supervised conservation projects in Switzerland, Cameroon and India. He is a vetting member at the TEFAF Maastricht and active in various association such as the Swiss Conservation Association (SCR-SKR) the International Council of Museums – Committee for Conservation (ICOM-CC) and the Pacific Arts Association (PAA).

Ahmed Elshabrawy is a lecturer assistant at the Conservation Department, Faculty of Archaeology, Cairo University. He specializes in the conservation of wall paintings and holds an MSc in Conservation of Wall Paintings and Reliefs, with his research focusing on the deterioration of paint layers due to iron compounds. He is currently pursuing his PhD, where he explores AI-driven solutions for condition assessment and conservation of cultural heritage.

Throughout his career, Ahmed has contributed to numerous conservation projects, including the Saqqara Excavations, City of Al-Fustat Excavation, Mosque of Azhar, Ava Rouis Church, Mosque of Lady Houria and the Deir Al-Malak church. His research interests include artificial intelligence applications in conservation, nanomaterials, and climate change’s impact on archaeological sites. He has published several research papers and presented at international conferences, focusing on integrating modern technology in heritage conservation.

Ahmed is also active in community service, participating in cultural awareness initiatives and conservation workshops, particularly aimed at children and individuals with special needs.

Paola Fagnola is an Italian book conservator and teacher. Moving the first steps into bookbinding at the age of 16, she learnt bookbinding at the Centro del Bel Libro in Ascona (CH). She graduated in Conservation (library cultural heritage: book and paper, photographic material, time-based media) at ICPAL, Rome, in 2016. She has taught bookbinding and book conservation in Design as well as Conservation Schools, holding lessons and workshops in Turin, Rome, Milan, Alessandria, Spoleto.

She is in charge of Conservation, Education and Communication in the family-owned studio Bottega Fagnola in Turin.

Sarah Graham is Head of Conservation at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) and is an accredited book and paper conservator. She studied History at Aberdeen University and then completed the Graduate Diploma and MA in Conservation of Historic Objects at Lincoln University.

After graduating, Sarah was the Heritage Council/Valuation Office intern at the National Archives of Ireland and Conservation Exhibitions Intern at Glasgow University Special Collections, where she worked on the collection of incunabula in preparation for the Ingenious Impressions: The coming of the Book exhibition. Following this, she was a project conservator at Glasgow before moving to the London Metropolitan Archives to work on the Anglo-Jewish collection. Since then, she was book conservator at Maynooth University, before joining PRONI in September 2019.

Anna Grzechnik is the Principal Registrar at The Andrzej Wawrzyniak Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw, Poland. She has 25 years of experience in art conservation of objects on paper support and works in the care, catalogue, storage and preservation of all artefacts and archival materials. She has more than 20 years of training apprentices in paper conservation. For the past 18 years she curated 17 large temporary exhibitions of art and memorabilia, also restored and conserved many of those exhibited items. Her special skill is implementing new media and multimedia techniques in art and museum spaces – she has a great sense as to what will work successfully and bring more viewers to the event. Her exhibition “Quantum of Peace” brought a Cannes Lions Golden Award for the Best Design in 2016. She also recently presented an online webinar for ICON.

Dr Lynn Kilgallon is a research fellow in medieval history with the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland. She is a comparative historian of medieval Ireland and Britain, specializing in the exercise of power and authority in the later Middle Ages, as well as the application of digital humanities technologies to medieval record sources.

Tony King is Senior Manager for Conservation and Collections Care for Durham University. Based at Palace Green Library, his team are responsible for preservation across the University’s varied museum, archive and library collections. He is an Icon Accredited Conservator specialising in archive and library materials with a particular interest in historical bookbinding practices.

Having trained at Camberwell College and undertaken the ARA Archive Conservation Training Scheme, Tony has worked as a Conservator for both Essex and Cumbria County Council before joining Durham University in 2020.

Hailey Kremenek is a first year Textile Conservation graduate student at the University of Glasgow. She spent her undergraduate career as a dual major in Art Conservation and Art History at the University of Delaware, during which she worked at Winterthur Museum as a textile conservation technician. For 18 months, she helped prepare 20th century ball gowns and create custom mounts for the 2023 exhibition Ann Lowe: American Couturier. She took her passion for textiles abroad through her project, “Hidden in the Threads of Time: An Independent Study Through the History of Textiles and Women’s Work,” that was funded through the University of Delaware Plastino Award. With the goal to recenter her art history education from a textile- and women-based perspective, she traveled through Ireland, Belgium, and France to visit locations of textile history and learn from fiber artists. For her senior thesis project, she investigated fashion conservation ethics through her treatment of an altered 1920s dress. Her research with historic dress, makers-based art history, and international craft production led her to pursue her conservation graduate education abroad, which is funded through the 2024/25 Fulbright/University of Glasgow Award.

Helen Mayor is an accredited paper and archive conservator working at the National Archives, Kew, London. Prior to the 22 years as a Civil Servant Conservator at Kew, Helen worked and trained as a conservator at the British Library, London. Helen has a Fine Art background and degree, a post-graduate diploma in Publishing and Book Production and an MA in Printmaking (Wimbledon School of Art).

Her conservation training started at the British Library in 1995 in the Oriental and India Office. After 8 and a half years at the British Library working mainly with prints, drawings and manuscripts, she moved on to work for the Public Records Office / National Archives (the last 22 years). She gained accreditation in 2015 and enjoys working with the vast and varied collection at The National Archives. This includes loans and exhibitions, and over the last 10 years she has developed the ongoing ‘High Use Document’ project addressing use and access by both interventive and preventative techniques.

Lauren Moon-Schott is a rare book conservator with a certificate in bookbinding from North Bennet Street School, Boston, Massachusetts, US and an MA in conservation of books and library materials from West Dean College, Sussex, UK. She works as a book conservator at Durham University, UK, in the Bishop Cosin’s Collection, and was previously employed in the Boston Public Library’s special collections department. She uses her experience in conserving publicly available rare materials as the foundation for her work in people-centric conservation decision-making, which was the central focus of three chapters she authored and co-authored in Routledge’s recent Conservation of Books edited by Abigail Bainbridge.

Sonja Schwoll is Head of Conservation and Treatment Development in the Collection Care Department at The National Archives in London. Before working at TNA, Sonja owned an independent book conservation studio in London and has worked in both the private and public sectors in the UK and the US. She is accredited by Icon and a fellow of IIC. All her career she has engaged in advancing the profession. She taught book conservation over 10 years at Camberwell College of Arts and West Dean College. Sonja holds an MA in book conservation and an MA in Art History.

Bridget is an accredited Library and Archives Conservator and established her independent conservation studio in 2018 in Cambridge, relocating to the Yorkshire Dales in 2021. Her bookbinding training began at the London College of Printing and from there she went on to train at Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, in 2013 completing an MA in Preventive Conservation. In 2013, she moved to the Cambridge Colleges’ Conservation Consortium at Corpus Christi College, as Book and Manuscript Conservator and from 2014 became Head of Conservation.

In 2021, a manuscript conservation project for Norwich Castle Museum led to collaborative analysis with Dr James Sargan, then of Durham University, and specialists from Edinburgh and Newcastle Universities to micro-CT scan the manuscript’s insect-damaged boards and reveal the technique for a historic slip repair.

In 2022 she began a part-time PhD with Lincoln University researching the evolution of book repair technique (1950-99), utilising both oral-history interviews and library surveys for data collection. In the same year she was awarded the Maureen Duke Educational Award to assist her doctoral research.

Bridget is a mentor for conservators on Icon’s Pathway to Accreditation and provides paper and book conservation support for the BA and MA Conservation of Cultural Heritage students at Lincoln University.