Helen Cunningham-Johns is a PhD student in Engineering at King’s College London, working in collaboration with The Courtauld under the supervision of Professor Barbara Shollock (Department of Engineering) and Aviva Burnstock (The Courtauld). Her current research focuses on improving sustainability in the preservation of artworks by understanding the response of oil paintings on canvas to the humidity and temperature of their surrounding environment.

Helen holds a BSc in Physics from the University of Durham and an MSc in Conservation Practice from Cardiff University. Her Masters research centered on identifying the transformation of iron corrosion products after laser irradiation, with Raman spectroscopy, in order to assess the utility of lasers in the cleaning of archaeological metals.

In her PhD, she will be using digital image correlation and mass spectrometry to study the effect of moisture on local deformation, and the distribution of moisture within the painting’s composite structure.

She is a student member of the Institute of Conservation (ICON) and the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC).

Research Interests

Her research interests are primarily on the use of novel analytical methods to both understand the deterioration of a wide variety of heritage materials and objects, as well as the effects of conservation methods on their continued preservation.

• Heritage Science
• Conservation
• Digital Image Correlation
• Mass Spectrometry

Thesis Title

Sustainable artwork preservation: Understanding and controlling environmentally induced changes to paintings

Supervisor Team

First Supervisor: Prof. Barbara Shollock

Second Supervisor: Prof. Aviva Burnstock (The Courtauld)