Katharine is an AHRC Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Partnership (AHRC-OOC-DTP) Collaborative Doctoral Award holder, undertaking a DPhil in History of Art at the University of Oxford in partnership with the Hamilton Kerr Institute. Her doctoral project investigates the materials and techniques of British medieval painting as a starting point for exploring broader aspects of culture and society in medieval Britain.
Katharine’s research is centred on the archive of paint samples housed at the Hamilton Kerr Institute. The study of paint samples in cross-section, often conducted in tandem with conservation treatments, can yield information on the pigments, binding media, and layer structures of paintings. This technical data can lead to extraordinary insights when integrated into broader historical enquiries. For example, uses of certain materials can reflect workshop organisation or patterns of trade. Katharine is particularly interested in examining artworks which span a variety of media, genres and contexts.
Repurposing existing data to answer new questions is timely at a moment when heritage bodies are exploring ways to encourage sustainable conservation practice. Katharine is excited to be drawing on the research communities and the expertise of conservators and heritage professionals in both Oxford and Cambridge, and hopes that this research will contribute towards raising the profile of vulnerable medieval art and encouraging its preservation.
Katharine graduated with a BA in History of Art from the University of Warwick (2014), having specialised in medieval art and architecture. She then completed a Postgraduate Diploma in the Conservation of Easel Paintings at The Courtauld Institute of Art (2018), before undertaking an Internship at the HKI. Among her projects at the HKI, Katharine worked on the conservation of 15th-century rood screen fragments from a Norfolk church and research into the pigments and techniques of medieval church polychromy in East Anglia. In 2021 Katharine also worked on the HKI’s cross-section database, and carried out accompanying research into artists’ use of the blue pigment azurite with reference to samples from the archive.
Katharine’s doctoral research is supervised by Professor Gervase Rosser and Dr Lucy Wrapson, with additional supervisory support from Dr Spike Bucklow.
