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