Edward Cheese is an Accredited conservator specialising in books and manuscripts. Following Postgraduate work in English Literature at the University of Durham he studied book conservation at West Dean College, where he was awarded the President’s Prize for his work and won a Queen Elizabeth Craft Scholarship. On qualifying as a conservator, Edward was invited to join Melvin Jefferson and Elizabeth Bradshaw at the Cambridge Colleges’ Conservation Consortium workshop to prepare the Parker manuscripts at Corpus Christi for digitisation. He was offered a permanent position at the end of the project and worked for the Consortium for just over eight years in total, the last three as Conservation Manager. In 2015 he took up his current post of Conservator of Manuscripts and Printed Books (Assistant Keeper) at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Edward has wide experience of practical conservation of printed books, manuscripts and archives, and is particularly interested in the history of bookbinding. He has also served on the Icon Task and Finish Group to formulate an ethical code for the conservation profession in the UK, been external examiner in Book Conservation at West Dean College, and has given many lectures and study sessions on the history of bookbinding and conservation issues.