Katerina Williams
- Roles
- Author
- Researcher
Head of Conservation and Treatment Development
About
Katerina is a trained archives materials conservator specialising in book conservation. As a researcher-practitioner, her work is grounded in the close analysis of historical binding techniques – particularly those developed for record-keeping, accounting and vernacular use – where her research directly informs hands-on conservation strategies at the bench.
Research activity
Throughout her research at The National Archives, Katerina has developed and disseminated various conservation treatment techniques ranging from the consolidation of pigments on various support materials, the conservation of parchment in the form of rolls, volumes and individual membranes, and the stabilisation of textiles, such as seal cords and book fastenings.
Her current research centres on conservation documentation and the application of semantic technologies to heritage data. She is particularly engaged with the development and use of ontologies, including the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM), to enhance the structure, accessibility, and interoperability of conservation assessments and treatments records. Her work bridges material conservation and digital humanities, contributing to more nuanced and sustainable documentation practices.
Katerina currently supports and collaborates with the Kartography Community Interest Company (CIC) in the development of The National Archives' Collection Care team's semantic, contextually driven knowledge platform, ResearchSpace. Her work promotes and facilitates access to conservation documentation, heritage science data, and collections-focused research.
Katerina regularly collaborates with the wider conservation sector and is an article editor for the Archives and Records Association’s Archives and Records Journal. She is committed to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and advancing the integration of traditional conservation practice with digital tools and infrastructures.
Publications
- Williams, Katerina and Smith, Holly. 2025. Twists, turns and Tackets: Designing and undertaking a survey to study The National Archives’ (UK) early limp parchment binding collection. In The Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 19: Proceedings of the nineteenth international seminar held at the University of Copenhagen 19 – 21 April, 2023, edited by Matthew James Driscoll. Museum Tusculanum Press.
- Williams, Katerina. 2024. An Airy Touch: Consolidating 19th Century Drawings. IConnect, August 2024.
- Smith, Holly and Williams, Katerina, and Schwoll, Sonja. 2023. Stationery Bindings. In Conservation of Books, edited by Abigail Bainbridge, 193-201. London: Routledge.