XRF Internship at the Centre for Research Collections

Find out what our Employ.ed Intern, Cameron Perumal, got up to in the final weeks of her project at the CRC in this week’s blog…

As I near the end of my internship, I have started reflecting on all the skills I have gained in just 8 short weeks.

As part of the University’s Employ.ed Internship Programme this summer, I was the Scientific Analysis of Heritage Collections Intern – or, trying to better understand the use of XRF (X-Ray Fluorescence) in conservation, so that we can engage more with the University’s special collections, in terms of its materiality. XRF is a non-destructive, surface analysis technique used to understand the elemental composition of artefacts, and to gain more historical context of their function.

Short-term projects that I have worked on have included: a framed collection of old British medals (to determine whether they were electrotype copies and to understand their composition); a large Giambologna bronze horse from the Torrie Collection (to gain more information that can be mapped onto a 3D image of the horse for an enhanced user experience); ancient Egyptian ushabtis (to attempt to classify and date them); Indian miniature paintings from the Tasawir collection (to understand pigment composition); and a page of text that claims to be written in West Port serial killer William Burke’s blood from a Burke and Hare scrapbook (to confirm whether Burke’s blood was really used).

Cameron with the XRF

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