Dr Matija Strlic
The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies is the source of some of the most outstanding minds and most influential research in the field of the built environment. Our work tackles some of the greatest challenges facing mankind, in areas such as health, sustainable cities and human well-being. We are part of The Bartlett: UCL's global faculty of the built environment.
Profile
Biography
Matija Strlic joined UCL Centre for Sustainable Heritage in 2007 as Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Heritage. Apart from teaching and research, he is also research manager at the Centre, and Heritage Science Laboratory manager.
He was awarded PhD in chemistry at the University of Ljubljana in 2000. This work led to an EU-funded project, in which he was in charge of scientific coordination. In the last 15 years, he has been involved in more than 30 research projects, mostly as a senior scientist, manager or principal investigator, attracting more than £10m funding predominantly for heritage science.
His research is frequently featured in the media. Recent research into the smell of old paper and the use of volatiles as markers for degradation attracted considerable media interest, including The New York Times, The Times, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, BBC, Le Temps Suisse, Scientific American, CBC Radio, Daily Planet, Discovery Channel, Radio Noorderlicht, and more than 50 other national and international media. It was also featured in the major scientific journal Science.
Watch Matija's UCL Lunch Hour Lecture on tour @the British Museum on the topic of old book smell.
Research Summary
Research interests span multi-disciplinary research linked to cultural heritage. The focus of these efforts are the development of new scientific tools and methods of study of heritage materials, collections and their interactions with the environment. Among the pioneering contributions are the development of degradomics, use of Near Infrared Spectrometry with chemometric data analysis in heritage science, use of chemiluminometry for studies of degradation of organic heritage materials, and studies of emission and absorption of volatile degradation products in heritage collections. My current research interests include development and use of damage functions and integrated modeling of heritage collections.
Presently, Matija Strlic is the Principal Investigator of the UK AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme project Collections Demography (2010-2013) and a Co-Investigator on Heritage Smells! (2010-2013). He is also involved in several other projects, including the EU projects POPART (2009-2012, “Preservation of plastic artefacts in museum collections”) and TEACH (2009-2011, “Technologies and tools to prioritize assessment and diagnosis of air pollution impact on immovable and movable cultural heritage”), and UK Technology Strategy Board-funded project Heritage Intelligence (2009-2011).
In the past few years he has been involved in other large collaborative projects: coordination of SurveNIR (2005-2008, "Near Infrared Tool for Collection Surveying"), scientific coordination of Papylum (2001-2004, “Chemiluminescence – a novel tool in paper conservation studies”), and participation in PaperTreat (2005-2008, "Evaluation of mass deacidification processes"), InkCor (2002-2005, “Stabilisation of iron-gall ink containing paper”) and MIP (2002-2005, “Metals in paper”). He co-coordinated the 8th European Conference on Research for Protection, Conservation and Enhancement of Cultural Heritage, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 10-13 November 2008.
Research outputs
Research activities
| Collections Demography - On Dynamic Evolution of Populations of Objects |
| Heritage Intelligence |
| Heritage Smells! |
| POPART |
| TEACH |