Introducing our conference keynote speaker - Tony King
The ARA Conference takes place in Glasgow this year from 5-7 August.
One of our keynote speakers is Tony King, Senior Collections Care and Conservation Manager at Durham University.
Tony began his career in local authority archives and then started work at Durham University in January 2020. The archive includes special collections and also works with the museum, the castle and collaborates on projects with the Cathedral archive His team at Durham are all book and paper conservators some with art/paper backgrounds, others trained via ACTS and some with bookbinding/book conservation backgrounds. The collections they work on have over 70,000 rare books.
Tony says of the conference theme of ‘Authenticity’ “This is a great theme – the debate on authenticity has been raging behind the closed doors of many a conservation studio and it’s something that different people – archivists, records managers, conservators, understand differently – so it’s great to be able to bring all these strands together and talk about it.”
At the ARA Conference Tony will be sharing a case study based around a very famous book: a First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s works. This is a very particular First Folio though. It was stolen from Durham, vandalised and then returned. The process that was used prior to carrying out any work on the book led them to an outcome that might not have been expected.
The First Folio undergoing conservation work.
They decided to throw the net of consultation wide, the feedback from stakeholders was, Tony says, “Passionate, useful, insightful. It opened up new perspectives and made us consider different possibilities – it wasn’t in any way tokenish.” Although adapted to each new context the experience in taking forward this project has provided a roadmap and a methodology that has become standard for work undertaken by the Durham University conservation team.
Tony says: “This has now become a very natural way of working for us. We just ask the question: who uses this? And then reach out to a sample of users.”
In his keynote speech at the ARA 2026 conference in Glasgow, Tony will go into more detail on the case study and explore more fully the ethical and practical considerations of ‘authenticity’.
He says: “I’m looking forward to attending the conference. This is such a rich subject and one that affects our day to day work. Looking back a few years you can see the development in practice coming out of concepts like this.”
Registration for the conference closes on 13 July - book now to secure a full three day package with accommodation. We also have one and two day delegate rates. Find out more and book here: https://conference.archives.org.uk/registration