About me

Kristine Rose-Beers ACR is Head of Conservation & Heritage for Cambridge University Libraries, and an accredited member of the Institute of Conservation (ICON). She has more than 20 years of experience in manuscript conservation.

Kristine graduated from the Conservation programme at Camberwell College of Arts, London, in 2002 before beginning work at Cambridge University Library, where her fascination with Islamic manuscript material was cemented. In 2008 Kristine moved to Ireland to work at the Chester Beatty Library as book conservator for the Turkish collection, and in 2011 she was appointed Assistant Keeper (Conservator of Manuscripts and Printed Books) at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. After four years in Cambridge, Kristine’s passion for the unique Chester Beatty collections brought her back to Dublin where she was the Head of Conservation until 2023.

Kristine is an active figure in the field of Islamic and Western manuscript conservation. Her research interests include the conservation of Islamic manuscript material, early binding structures and their relevance to contemporary conservation, and the use of pigments and dyes in medieval manuscripts. She has extensive first-hand experience of the complexities of conserving a wide range of bound manuscript material, as well as pigmented surfaces on both paper and parchment. Kristine's approach is based on her understanding of materials and technologies gained through historical reconstructions as well as academic studies.

Based on her previous work, Kristine has collaborated with several significant research projects, including the TIF-DAK conservation project at the National Library of Egypt, and MINIARE at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. She has presented research findings at international conferences and published articles in peer-reviewed editions, including ‘Preparing to conserve an early Qur’an manuscript in the collections of Sir Alfred Chester Beatty: Exploring the materiality of the early Islamic book,’ 2021; ‘An Inspiration for Conservation: An Historic Andalusi Binding Structure,’ 2016; and ‘MOLAB® meets Persia: Non-invasive study of a sixteenth-century illuminated manuscript,' Studies in Conservation, 2015.

Kristine has taught and lectured internationally, and is a regular tutor at the Montefiascone Project in Italy. She is a member of the Institute of Conservator-Restorers in Ireland (ICRI); The Islamic Manuscript Association (TIMA); and a team member of The Kairouan Manuscript Project (KMP).

                                                                                            

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