We know the hundreds of scents that we perceive every day have an impact on the way we think, feel and behave. Less is known about how they affect the way we engage with history and heritage: part of our research explores how certain smells can help the retention of memories and knowledge in a museum context, make heritage more inclusive and promote well-being.
Olfactory Heritage Science
Our approach to olfactory heritage research is interdisciplinary, with unique expertise form a heritage science perspective. We have developed a framework to identify smells of cultural significance and study them via chemical and sensory characterisation at the Heritage Science Laboratory. Find out more about olfactory heritage science and our framework to research heritage scents.
Olfactory heritage projects
At UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage, we have been researching olfactory heritage since 2010. As a result, we have developed collaborative projects involving partners in academia, heritage and industry. Find out more about our current and past projects.
We engage in discussions with scientists, heritage and policy professionals in a variety of expert forums; our findings are published in leading academic journals in the heritage science, conservation, history, chemistry and cultural studies. Our work has reached a wider audience and engaged the public in a conversation about smell and heritage.
- The New York Times
- BBC Future
- Newsweek
- BBC
- Channel 5’s Secrets of The National Trust
- The Times
- The Guardian
- CNN
- The Sunday Times
- TEDx
- The Guardian Science podcast
For other examples of media engagement, including international press, please see here.
- M. Strlič, J. Thomas, T. Trafela, L. Cséfalvayová, I. Kralj Cigić, J. Kolar, M. Cassar: “Material Degradomics: on the Smell of Old Books”, Anal Chem. 81 (2009) 8617-8622.
- M. Strlič, E. Menart, I. Kralj Cigić, G. de Bruin, J. Kolar, M. Cassar: “Emission of volatiles and reactive oxygen species during degradation of iron gall ink”, Polym. Degrad. Stab., 95 (2010) 66-71.
- M. Strlič, I. Kralj Cigić, A. Možir, G. de Bruin, J. Kolar, M. Cassar: “The Effect of Volatile Organic Compounds and Hypoxia on Paper Degradation”, Polym Degrad. Stab., 96 (2011) 608-615.
- K. Curran, M. Strlič: “Polymers and Volatiles: Using VOC Analysis for Improved Conservation of Plastic and Rubber Objects”, Stud. Conserv., 60 (2015) 1-14.
- Bembibre, C; Strlič, M; (2017) Smell of heritage: a framework for the identification, analysis and archival of historic odours. Heritage Science, 5 (1) 10.1186/s40494-016-0114-1).
- Bembibre Jacobo, C; Barratt, S; Vera, L; Strlič, M; (2017) Smelling the past: a case study for identification, analysis and archival of historic pot-pourri as a heritage smell. In: Bridgland, J, (ed.) ICOM-CC 18th Triennial Conference Preprints, Copenhagen, 4-8 September 2017. (pp. p. 1601). Paris: International Council of Museums.
- K. Curran, M. Underhill, J. Grau-Bove, T. Fearn, L. T. Gibson, M. Strlič: ”Sniffing out Decay: classifying degraded modern polymeric museum artefacts by their smell”, Angew. Chem., 57 (2018) 7336-7340, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201712278.
- F. Portoni, J. Grau-Bové, M. Strlič: “A non-invasive, non-destructive technique to quantify naphthalene emission rates from museum objects”, Heritage Science 7 (2019) #58.
Contact us
Cecilia Bembibre
Email: cecilia.bembibre@ucl.ac.uk
Join the network
UCL SENSOR (Sensory rEsearch iNterdiSciplinary fORum) is an interest group under the BEAMS Heritage Science and Engineering Network. Its quarterly meetings are open to all researchers with an interest in multisensory heritage. For more information, please email us.