Introducing Lucilla Ronai, Assistant Lecturer in Paper Conservation

We are excited to welcome Lucilla Ronai as the Grimwade Centre’s new Assistant Lecturer in Paper Conservation. Luci has worked at prestigious institutions including the National Library of Australia, the Australian National Maritime Museum, and the Library of Trinity College Dublin. Passionate about sharing conservation knowledge, she runs the YouTube channel The Conservation Starter. Her career highlights include being named the 2021 AICCM Conservator of the Year, collaborating with the University of Sydney for a research project on hazardous heritage material, and receiving multiple grants for research and training, including the Darling Travel Grant and the Nicholas Hadgraft Memorial Scholarship. Here Luci Ronai talks with current PhD candidate in Cultural Materials Conservation Seka Seneviratne about her career journey, her plans for teaching, and what’s next in her research journey.

What first drew you to the field of conservation, and how did your journey in this profession begin?

That’s a big question! I completed my bachelor’s degree in visual arts at the University of Sydney, majoring in print media and printmaking. I was actively involved in creating prints and developed a deep understanding of materiality and the theoretical aspects of printmaking. I also loved working with my hands.

During my undergraduate studies, I took some archaeology electives, which I found fascinating. These courses opened my mind in ways I had never experienced before. However, I realised that I wasn’t particularly interested in going on archaeological digs or making discoveries—big or small. Instead, I became more curious about what happened to objects after they were excavated and researched. I wanted to know who took care of them and how. My professors suggested that I speak with conservators, and so in my second year of undergraduate studies, I learned about the Master of Cultural Materials Conservation course at the University of Melbourne.

After completing my undergraduate degree, I went straight into the Master’s program. At the time, it was the only postgraduate qualification in conservation in Australia, making it the go-to program for aspiring conservators. I specialised in paper conservation, and many of my teachers from that time are still part of the Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation today.

One of the most influential experiences during my studies was my internship at the State Library of New South Wales—the oldest continuously running library in Australia, and home to one of the largest paper conservation labs in the country. Working with their vast collections and experienced conservators was an incredibly informative experience.

What kind of objects do you work with in your everyday practice?

As a paper conservator, I specialise in paper, but conservators work often involves a diverse range of materials. Naturally, I work with flat paper items, but also any items with paper components or associated with paper.

For example, I also work with parchment, which is animal skin treated to become a writing surface. I’ve undertaken book conservation treatments, and books are interesting because they’re dynamic composite objects—while they contain paper, they can also incorporate materials like wood, metal, textiles, and leather. One of the more interesting items I’ve started work on is a three-dimensional celestial globe with printed paper gores.

I also work with photographs, which are especially fascinating because they’re made through chemical processes. While many are on paper supports, others can be on metal or plastic. Historical motion picture reels and certain plastic-based photographs can be particularly challenging to work with due to degradation. These materials are often referred to as “malignant plastics”—a subject that scholars at the Grimwade Centre have researched extensively as part of the ARC Linkage project PolyMuse.

The way conservators approach objects is by first identifying what it is and how it was made—known as the materials and techniques. What is it made from and what is the media – what has been used to form the image or information? Is the surface painted with watercolour, is it handwritten in iron gall ink? Or is it print-based material, such as an etching, lithograph, or screen print? We also need to consider the history of the item and what has been applied to it. For example: Is it framed or unframed? Does it have supports like window mounts? Then we start to look at the condition of the item and how it has changed, chemically and physically, over time.

For me, there’s a beautiful connection between my background in printmaking and my conservation work. My undergraduate experience gave me a deep understanding of print media, which I now bring into my conservation practice every day.

Were there any important moments or inspirations that solidified your decision to specialise in paper conservation?

It was a tricky decision because I was interested in so many different things. While studying my Master’s, I seriously considered specialising in all the specialisations offered by the Master of Cultural Materials Conservation—paintings, paper, or objects (as I was also drawn to textiles).

Ultimately, paper conservation felt like the right fit because of my background in printmaking. I was also fascinated by books, and paper was a good starting point for this specialisation.

Choosing paper conservation has led me to a wide range of opportunities. Even as a paper conservator, I’ve had the chance to work on objects such as a naval helicopter, collaborate with object conservators, and engage with different materials in conservation labs. It’s been an incredibly rewarding path.

Could you provide an overview of your work as a paper conservator? What types of objects do you typically encounter in your practice, and what challenges make paper conservation unique compared to other specialities?

Paper is a fascinating material because it’s something we use every day—it’s everywhere. Even though we are gradually moving away from paper in daily life, many people still remember handling newspapers, school notes, or letters, and they often perceive paper as a robust material because of these experiences.

However, in reality, paper can be incredibly fragile. It is highly susceptible to both physical and chemical deterioration—it can crease, tear, and degrade easily. Unlike some other objects in conservation, paper is also highly absorbent, making it vulnerable to environmental factors like humidity, pollutants, and acidic degradation.

When it comes to artworks on paper, they are often treated with great care and reverence due to their artistic or cultural value. But in contrast, archival and library materials are often valued more for the information they contain rather than as individual objects. A single piece of archival paper may not seem significant, but as part of a larger collection, it holds historical, academic, and cultural importance.

Much of my background has been in the library field, working in libraries across Australia and overseas. One of the aspects I love about library conservation is its direct connection to public access—researchers, academics, and the public regularly engage with these collections. So, when we treat materials, we’re not only thinking about preservation but also access and usability. We ask: How will someone handle this in a reading room? How do we ensure longevity while maintaining accessibility?

One of my major projects at the National Library of Australia involved preservation for digitisation. The Trove digitisation program is a massive initiative aimed at making historical materials accessible online. For an item to be digitised, it must be in a condition where it can be safely handled and imaged (by scanning or photography). If a document is too fragile, covered in sticky tape, torn, or so dirty that the text is illegible, digitisation is ineffective or impossible. So, a major focus of paper conservation in these contexts is: stabilising materials for safe handling and imaging, ensuring text and information remains readable, and balancing preservation with accessibility.

Ultimately, conservation isn’t just about preserving the material itself—it’s about preserving the knowledge and stories it holds, making them available for future generations.

One of the projects you worked on was researching the preservation of cellulose nitrate and cellulose acetate plastic film in historic photograph collections. Could you share some insights into the significance of this project and the key lessons you learned from it?

While working as a paper conservator at the Australian National Maritime Museum, I initiated a project to address a critical gap in research on historic photographs on plastic film in collections. The museum held a significant collection of cellulose nitrate and cellulose acetate materials, but there was uncertainty about their hazard level and the best methods for identification, storage, handling, and transportation.

These materials are examples of what’s known as malignant plastics—as they deteriorate over time they can become hazardous to both people and other collection material. Given the scale of the collection, we needed a quick and reliable way to identify the different types of film materials before determining appropriate conservation strategies.

To address this, we collaborated with the University of Sydney, specifically with the Vibrational Spectroscopy unit led by Dr Elizabeth Carter. Using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), they developed a method for rapid identification of the film types. The portable FTIR instrument allowed us to capture data on-site, which was then analysed at the university.

An additional challenge was making this data usable for people who weren’t experts in vibrational spectroscopy. To bridge this gap, we worked with statistical specialists at the University of Sydney, who helped process and cluster the data into accessible graphs. The goal was to make the results understandable not only for conservators but also for collection managers, curators, and other museum professionals—essentially for anyone responsible for handling these materials.

How has your professional experience shaped your approach to teaching? In what ways do you hope to incorporate the practical knowledge gained from your conservation work into your teaching?

Before stepping into teaching, I worked as a Senior Conservator at the National Library of Australia, where I managed conservation projects and supervised staff. A significant part of my role involved working with emerging conservators—recent graduates entering the field. Since everyone comes in with different skill levels, I had to assess their knowledge, guide them, and help them develop their skills.

Having worked in multiple conservation labs over the past ten years, I’ve gained diverse perspectives on conservation practices. What’s fascinating about this field is that even if you’ve been practicing for decades, you can always step into a new lab, observe someone else’s treatment approach, and learn something new. Conservation is fundamentally about lifelong learning, constantly refining techniques and adapting to new discoveries.

Conservation has a strong tradition of knowledge-sharing, and passing down skills is crucial to preserving cultural heritage. Throughout my career, I’ve pursued mentorship roles, whether through structured supervision or informal, hands-on teaching in lab environments.

In the end, every institution, lab, and conservator I’ve worked with has contributed to my growth, and I strive to pass that knowledge on in my teaching.

Are there specific techniques or methodologies that you believe are essential for students to grasp in their study of paper conservation?

So the bread and butter of a paper conservator is being able to look at paper material and understand what it is, what it’s made from, how it’s being used. They need to understand the materiality of it—its condition, physical and chemical mechanisms, what it has interacted with over time. And then they need to take a step back and ask, what does it need? Treatment-wise, how should I approach it? Also, you have to know what your skill level is and whether you are the best person to do it—and you have to know when to stop!

Students must learn not only how to treat an object but also why a particular approach is necessary—and when intervention should be avoided altogether.

For a paper conservator, dry cleaning, and removing the loose surface can be an important step, but sometimes dirt is also important, and once you remove it, you can’t exactly throw it back on. So we need to have an understanding that we’re having an impact on the object and changing the course of its future life and possibly its interpretation. We can mend things that are crumpled; we can unfold and flatten an object with humidification. We need to make sure we test everything, the paper itself, and the media, and make sure it’s safe to apply moisture. If it’s torn, we can realign those tears so it looks like they were never there. We use materials like Japanese tissue paper and wheat starch paste, which has been tried and tested over millennia and is also reversible.

So those are the key sorts of treatment skills that we want to pass on. But I think it’s more important that student conservators have those decision-making skills, so that they can take a step back and ask the difficult questions. They don’t just say, “this is how we do it”; they ask: “why are we doing it? Should we be doing it?” We want them to learn how to do these things, but we don’t want them to just be in default mode and apply the same approaches to everything. Every object is different. You could be working for forty years, but then the next object on your bench will come along, and even though it’s similar to what you’ve worked with before, it reacts completely differently.

As for the last question, how are you hoping to further your research at the University of Melbourne? What research projects are you currently working on and in the future?

Good question!

One area I feel very passionate about is communicating conservation to wider audiences. This has been mainly through utilising social media like YouTube and using it as a communication tool. Letting the public know conservation exists, and advocating for the profession and the cultural heritage we work on is vitally important. 

Other areas of interest include the history of conservation Australia, the skills required for established and emerging conservators, and how to best pass these on.

Those are three streams of research interest, and I’m trying to see if I can weave them together in some way as a possible PhD topic. That’s probably my next big step in research—to pursue a PhD that aligns with the Grimwade Centre’s research areas.

Lucilla Ronai co-coordinates and teaches subjects in the Master of Cultural Materials Conservation program: Conservation Practice (CUMC90030), Advanced Conservation Practice (CUMC90005), Conservation Industry Internship (CUMC90006) and Conservation Industry Project (CUMC90037). She will also be teaching in two first-year subjects: Technical Examination and Documentation (CUMC90032) and Conservation in Theory and Practice (CUMC90040).

Feature image: Luci Ronai at the Australian National Maritime Museum Conversation Lab.