Dr Richard Mulholland

I am a practicing paper conservator and technical art historian. My  research is primarily concerned with material, technique, and studio process used by artists from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century, particularly focusing on material and meaning in twentieth century artists' drawings.

I am also engaged in research on the conservation and safeguarding of cultural heritage collections at risk in world conflict zones, focusing particularly on post-conflict Afghanistan. I  have spent time working in the field in Kabul during a series of research and capacity-building projects funded by the British Council's Cultural Protection Fund. My research looks at the impact of capacity-building and educational programmes in cultural heritage conservation in the region post-2001, and is focused on how alternative pedagogies for teaching and learning in cultural heritage conservation in Afghanistan might be used to develop skills and knowledge in the region, paticularly after the withdrawl of international forces in 2021.

After studying Art History at the University of Leicester and Conservation of Fine Art at Northumbria. I completed my PhD at the Royal College of Art, London and carried out post-doctoral research at the the Bodleian Library at Oxford on the identification of pigments used in an eighteenth-century colour chart by the Austrian natural history illustrator, Ferdinand Bauer using Raman spectroscopy, XRF and hyperspectral imaging. Before joining Northumbria, I spent nineteen years as an art conservator working at the V&A, the Tate, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Harvard Art Museums.