Mareike Opeña graduated from the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences, Germany in 2009 with a Diplom and a Master thesis on ethics and cross-cultural perception in conservation of contemporary art in 2017.
Since 2010, she has held various positions in private practice conservation in the New York City modern and contemporary art market environment.
Mareike is co-founding member of AIC’s Contemporary Art Network (CAN!) and served as the network's Program Chair for AIC’s Annual Meeting 2019.
Since 2020 she is researching contemporary art conservation in the art market environment as an external PhD candidate at Maastricht University, NL.
In 2023, she became research assistant for the international research project "Legacies of Artists' Studios - sharing and archiving embodied knowledge for the conservation of technology based artworks."