Barakat Trust Early-Career Conservation Interns Present First International Conference Papers

28 March 2022

Photo: NLPCPM

Manuscript from the collection of the NLPCPM. Photo: NLPCPM

As part of the Kairouan Manuscript Project (KMP), the Barakat Trust funds a one-year internship for early-career conservators at the National Laboratory for the Preservation and Conservation of Parchment and Manuscripts (NLPCPM) in Raqqada, Kairouan, Tunisia.

On 11 February 2022, Kaouther Massoudi, Kawther Zamzami, Nada Ben Bechria, and Mohammed Hedi Abidi—the Barakat Trust-funded interns working at the National Laboratory for the Preservation and Conservation of Parchment and Manuscripts (NLPCPM) in Raqqada, Kairouan, Tunisia, a division of the National Heritage Institute—presented their first international conference papers.

They spoke during the emerging conservators panel of the virtual meeting of the Graphic Documents Working Group of the International Council of Museums Committee for Conservation (ICOM-CC), which was organised by the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences (CICS). The panel was chaired Emilie Cloos, loans and exhibitions conservator and coordinator at the National Archives UK, and Marlen Börngen, research associate at CICS and joint doctoral candidate at CICS and CSMC.

The Barakat Trust awarded the KMP funding to initiate the year-long internship programme in 2020; but due to the Covid pandemic, the programme started in 2021.