Kate van Lookeren Campagne - Nuttall gained an honours degree in History at the University of London in 1984. She went on to gain a diploma in the conservation and restoration of ceramics and Glass at West Dean College, Sussex, England during which she was an intern in the conservation and restoration department of the British Museum in London. After completing her studies she was head of the ceramics conservation department of Plowden and Smith Ltd in London where she carried out conservation and restoration projects for major museums and collectors. In 1988 she moved to Paris where she worked for three years as a freelance conservator-restorer for collectors, auction houses and museums, including the Louvre and Fontainebleau Palace. In 1992 she moved with her Dutch husband to Zutphen in the Netherlands where she worked until 1999 at the Stitching Gelders Oudheidkundig Contact as a regional ceramic and glass conservator and advisor for the province of Gelderland and Overijssel. She began teaching ceramic and glass conservation at the Opleiding Restauratoren in Amsterdam in 1993 which later became part of the ICN (Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage). Since 1996 she has also worked freelance as a restorer and advisor for museums and private clients throughout the country and abroad. She has taught short courses at various international academic institutions abroad in Malta, Finland and Spain as well as numerous short courses in collection management and conservation at the ICN. Since 1998 she has been involved with ICOM-CC Ceramic and glass group as assistant coordinator.
Since 2008 she has taught and coordinated the ceramic and glass conservation programme at the at the UvA. Her special interest is the history of Dutch tile production and their degradation mechanisms.
In 2022 she sucessfully defended het PhD dissertation: 'Understanding Dutch tin-glazed tiles (1600 - 1750) through the interpretation of texts, analysis and recipe reconstruction.'