Olfactory Heritage

Olfactory heritage is an aspect of cultural heritage concerning smells that are meaningful to a community due to their connections with significant places, practices, objects or traditions, and can therefore be considered part of the cultural legacy for future generations. 

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.

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. 

Media Engagement

• 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.

Publications

• 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.