As the name suggests, this group comes together with the Board Members once a month to discuss and strategize about the core areas APOYOnline is working on, such as the coordination of pending events, translations, community engagement, and so on. The team involved in these efforts includes the following people:
Museologist graduated from the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro – UNIRIO (2008), Master in International Relations from the State University of Rio de Janeiro – UERJ (2012) and post-graduated in Conservation and Restoration of Historic-Artistic Assets by Palazzo Spinelli , Italy (2018). She has been working as a Museology Technician at the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN) since 2010, with an emphasis on Preventive Conservation of movable cultural assets.
Cristina Lara Corrêa has been working on her PhD in Museology at the Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias (Lisbon) since 2017. She has studied Management of Culture Heritage, Art Education, Art History and Paintings Conservation in several Brazilian institutions as well as the Istituto per L’Arte e il Restauro (Florence).
Cristina focuses on the Preventive Conservation of Cultural Heritage and Social Responsibility. She is one of the founding members of LUME – Associação de Cultura e Património (Portugal), and is also a member of ICOM Brazil.
Diana Díaz was born in Colombia and obtained her training as Conservator of Cultural Heritage from the Universidad Externado de Colombia (Bogotá, 2001-2007). She specialized in conservation of photographs at the National School from the Conservation (ENCRyM, 2008-2009) in Mexico City, and is currently conservator of photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Diana has worked with fine art collections and photographic archives in Colombia, Mexico and the USA.
She is also a member of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) and the International Council of Museums – Conservation Committee (ICOM-CC).
Gabriela Lúcio is enrolled in the Science Information Masters at University of Brasília (Class of 2021). In 2018 she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Conservation and Restoration from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, specializing in textiles and paper.
She is a former researcher at Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, with the research project “The Kimonos of Maria Augusta Rui Barbosa: research, conservation and access to the public”.
Gabriela is also the volunteer Editor-in-chief of Desvio magazine.
Pre-program conservation student and graduate of George Mason University with
a Bachelor's of Art in Art History. Upon graduating in 2016, she interned for the
Curator of South Asian Art, at the Smithsonian Freer and Sackler Gallery of Asian
Art, and assisted in designing the Encountering the Buddha Exhibition in 2017. She
studied conservation practices under the Paper and Photographs Conservator of
the Freer and Sackler Gallery of Asian Art. In 2017, she joined the Washington
Conservation Guild and started a position in the Collections, Access, Loan and
Management Division at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. In 2018, she
studied abroad in Medellin, Colombia and joined the non-profit organization
APOYOnline Association for Heritage Preservation in the Americas to assist with
updating the website, providing technology support for onsite international
conferences, and designing media and print materials. She currently still
volunteers for APOYOnline.
Irene Delaveris got a Bachelor’s degree in Conservation, specializing in the conservation of archeological heritage at TEI Athina (Athens, Greece).
In Norway, Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, she gained experience in preventive conservation and object treatment, material testing, collection management, as well as organizing academic events and teaching. Her most important project since 2012 has been to spread preventive conservation knowledge to native communities and students of the Archaeological and Anthropological Studies UMSA, La Paz.
In 2017 she was a UNESCO consultant , participating in the Conservation Plan for the World Heritage Site in Tiwanaku.
During 2021-22 she was working in Saudi Arabia for the Royal Commission for AlUla
Except for APOYOnline she is a member of other organizations such as the Bolivian Plurinational Community Museum Network and Red PROTERRA.
Lénia Fernandes has a M.A. in Conservation and Restoration from Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, specializing in photograph and paper objects. She is currently pursuing a PhD in the same institution on the topic of colour slides in Portuguese collections. She previously worked as a photograph conservator at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (2014-2016 and 2021-2022) and the Nederlands Fotomuseum (2016-2021).
Her professional experience is also connected to institutions such as the Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln (2012-2014), HTW-Berlin (2011), the Arquivo Regional e Biblioteca Pública da Madeira (2009-2011) and the Image Permanence Institute (2007-2008).
Magdalena Solano is a graduate fellow at the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation with a focus in Paintings Conservation. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of California, Los Angeles in Art History. Her professional research interests include materials used in modern and contemporary art, cleaning technologies, and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the museum field. She has been with APOYOnline since the beginning of 2020 and assists several working groups.
Graduate of the University of Maryland School of Humanities. I studied both History and Secondary
Social Studies Education and am a big proponent of the use of primary sources to enrich
student’s experiences with culture and history. These sources are only made available through the
monumental global endeavor of preservation and restoration and I am glad to be among these groups
leading this effort. IT specialist and international consultant. I also love all things tech and how
technology can facilitate our work. While living in the United States, I learned Spanish at school and
practiced Portuguese at home.
Nathália Pamio Luiz is PhD student in Museology with research grant UNESCO Chair ULHT “Education, Citizenchip and Cultural Diversity” (Lusofona University – ULHT, 2019-2021). Founding Member of LUME – Association for Culture and Heritage. Volunteer on Executive Production at Lisbon Architecture Triennale (2019-2020). Executive Producer at Base7 Cultural Projects (2013-2018). Master in Museology (ULHT, 2020). Specialist in Cultural Management (PUC-SP, 2016) and Special and Inclusive Art Teaching (Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, 2015). Postgraduate in Cultural Production (FAAP, 2014). Bachelor in Photography (Centro Universitário SENAC, 2011).
Sakis Efthimiadis is a librarian at the Library of Congress who brings more than 25 years of experience in the Information Technology field with specialized knowledge in Information Security and web applications development.
Sakis is a United States Army veteran where he performed as a Satellite Controller for the Army’s 1st Space Brigade and as a soldier. He also developed satellite-related software.
Sakis graduated from the East Coast Polytechnic Institute, is a CISSP and holds a number of other computer industry certifications.
Sandra Baruki is Photograph Conservator and Coordinator of the Center for Photographic Conservation and Preservation (2002 – 2020), of the National Arts Foundation (FUNARTE), Brazil. She’s a collaborating lecturer of the Professional Master’s Program in Preservation and Management of the Cultural Heritage of Sciences and Health, FIOCRUZ.
She has an M.A. in Conservation from Camberwell College of Arts, University of The Arts London (2001). Sandra has taught photographic conservation in Brazil and in different Latin American and Caribbean countries, invited by ICCROM and other institutions. She coordinated and was a consultant for conservation projects in Brazilian institutions. Sandra is also the author of articles and editor of technical reference publications in the subject.
Sarah Sequeira is Bachelor of Arts with a Major in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage from the School of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She is currently a student in the graduate program in Preservation and Management of the Cultural Heritage of Science and Health at Oswaldo Cruz House/Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (COC/Fiocruz – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). Her current research deals with the challenges of conserving outdoor cultural assets.
Teresa Lança is Senior conservator responsible for the conservation and restoration activities of the collections of the National Library of Portugal since 1997 to date, collaborates with several institutions in the conservation of their graphic document collections and conducts training courses in preventive conservation aimed at professionals from libraries, archives and museums.
Through scholarships he attended internships at the Library of Congress, the Université de Sorbonne and the National Library of Spain.
Teresa has a Bachelor in Conservation of Graphic Documents (1993) and graduated in Higher Studies Specialized in Art Expertise (1995). She also has aMaster in Heritage Studies (2013) and a Master in Documentation and Information Sciences (2019).
Verónica Ivette Mercado Oliveras is finalizing her graduate studies at the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation with a major in Library and Archives Conservation and a minor in Paper Conservation. She graduated Magna Cum Laude (2018) from UPR-Mayagüez with a BA in history and a minor in art. Her thesis pertained to unveiling the challenges of building Puerto Rico’s first multi-specialized conservation laboratory, the Anton Konrad Conservation Center in Museo de Arte de Ponce. While in college, she discovered that Puerto Rico’s textual heritage was at risk due to the absence of book conservators and resource shortages. Consequently, Mercado pursued pre-program training in the Island and across the Atlantic with the ultimate goal of becoming a Library and Archives Conservator.
Amid the aftermath of Hurricane María, as an undergraduate senior, she assisted UPR-Mayagüez Library in recovery efforts, an experience that allowed her to see the preservation of tangible cultural heritage through resiliency and community effort. This has inspired Verónica to support future emergency mitigation efforts throughout Puerto Rico and the rest of the United States. To continue honing her skills while giving back to her community, during the 2nd graduate summer, Verónica returned to Puerto Rico to support the National Library in various preventive and book conservation initiatives. Today, she is at the Library of Congress completing the Advanced Book Conservation Internship and is the recipient of the Harper-Inglis Fellowship 2023-24.