About

Lucrezia Milillo holds a PhD in Social Anthropology. Her doctoral research aimed to further our understanding of Andean khipus – colourful knotted cords used as writing in the Andes for fourteen centuries: before, during and after the Inka empire.
Using the practice theory framework to combine ethnographic fieldwork in Peru with the study of khipus in museum collections in Europe and the US, Lucrezia’s research provides new insights into the significance of colour and materials used in the production of Andean khipus.

In 2021-2024 Lucrezia is the Group Leader of a research project funded by IPERION-HS – a pan-European infrastructure for heritage science. The project is called “Meaningful materials in the khipu code: a multi-modal analysis” for which she coordinated the collaboration of six European museums and four European laboratories. In this way, she could lead the first physical and chemical analysis of eight khipus. The research team also included Dr Marei Hacke – a conservator scientist specialised in textile analysis with experience in the study of Andean textiles at the Heritage Laboratory of Visby, Sweden – and Professor Sabine Hyland – a worldwide leading khipu scholar in the Divinity department at the University of St Andrews-.

Lucrezia holds an undergraduate degree in Cultural Anthropology (2017) and a two-year master’s degree in History and Anthropology at the University of Bologna (cum laude, 2019). Here, she studied the collection, provenance and morphology of Andean khipus in Italian collections.