Maria João Petisca (Preservation Studies Program, Department of Art Conservation) was a participant in the Delaware Public Humanities Institute in 2016. She currently lives in Lisbon, Portugal, where she works in a private practice, conserving artifacts for both private and institutional clients. She is also in her last year of the Preservation Studies Ph.D. Program, UD, with the expected completion around May 2019. Maria is writing her dissertation with the title: “Investigations into Chinese export lacquerware from the region of Guangzhou (Canton): Black and gold, 1700-1850,″ and is expected to complete it around May 2019.
About her experience as a recent Delphi fellow, Maria says: “I work in lacquer conservation, a field with highly specific terminology, and English is not my first language. DELPHI was crucial for me in learning how to develop my communication skills and adapt them to different audiences. Being able to share an effective message on why these objects matter can be a fundamental tool to further their preservation; through public outreach, I can save many more works of art than I could possibly treat individually in a lifetime.”
Student profile page at the University of Delaware