The UCL Centre for Sustainable Heritage was established in March 2001 by University College London. It was formed through the collaboration of three UCL departments:

• The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment

• The Institute of Archaeology

• School of Library, Archive and Information Studies

The Centre consists of a small, flexible, focused, interdisciplinary team – a model of sustainable practice.

The Centre has identified, and aims to fill, the gap between disciplines responsible for the physical protection of the moveable and immovable heritage. Its contribution to a sustainable future for the heritage is through participation in collaborative environmental, scientific and technological research, innovative teaching, advice and consultancy.

The Centre engages in evidence-based research on heritage protection, and through its teaching activities challenges the traditional divide between preservation and use.

We work closely with external partners on interdisciplinary stakeholder-led research focussing on past present and future climate, on heritage material research and on educating future heritage managers on the links between sustainability and cultural heritage.

Main task

UCL will offer expertise in identification and analysis of organic cultural heritage materials, using both spectroscopic (UV-VIS-NIR-MidIR, MS) and chromatographic (GC-MS) techniques. In addition, UCL has considerable knowledge in correlating spectroscopic and chemical information using chemometrics and in environmental assessment, including analyses using headspace-GC-MS.

Contact person : Dr. Matija Strlič

Dr. Matija Strlič has recently joined the Centre for Sustainable Heritage, University College London as Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Heritage. He will work in Popart as principal investigator – PI. He is editor or member of the editorial board of “e-Preservation Science”, “Acta Chimica Slovenica” and member of ICOM-CC “Graphical documents” Supervised 4 Ph.D. students, 1 M.Sc. students and 24 B.Sc. students in his career; he is co-editor of 2 books: “Ageing and Stabilization of Paper” and “Use of Lasers in Conservation and Conservation Science” and published 50 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, 14 chapters in books. He coordinates the FP project SurveNIR "Near Infrared Tool for Collection Surveying" and cooperates in the PaperTreat project "Evaluation of mass deacidification processes" and took part in 12 other European projects focusing on Cultural heritage research.

Relevant recent publications

• M. Schreiner, M. Strlič (Eds): "Use of Lasers in Conservation and Conservation Science", COST office, 2007.

• M. Strlič, J. Kolar (Eds.): "Ageing and Stabilization of Paper", National and University Library, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2005.

• M. Góra, M. Pircher, E. Götzinger, T. Bajraszewski, M. Strlič, J. Kolar, Ch. K. Hitzenberger, P. Targowski: "Optical Coherence Tomography for Examination of Parchment Degradation", Laser Chemistry, 2006 (2006) article ID 68679.

• M. Strlič, B. Pihlar, L. Mauko, J. Kolar, S. Hočevar, B. Ogorevc: "A new electrode for micro-determination of paper pH", Restaurator, 26 (2005) 159-171.

• M. Strlič, V. S. Šelih, J. Kolar, D. Kočar, B. Pihlar, R. Ostrowski, J. Marczak, M. Strzelec, M. Marincek, T. Vuorinen, L. S. Johansson: "Optimisation and on-line acoustic monitoring of laser cleaning of paper", Appl Phys A, 81 (2005) 943-951.

• D. Kočar, M. Strlič, J. Kolar, J. Rychlý, L Matisová-Rychlá, B. Pihlar: "Chemiluminescence from paper III. The effect of superoxide anion and water", Polym. Degrad. Stab., 88 (2005) 407-414.

• J. Kolar, M. Strlič: "Evaluation of stabilization of iron gall ink corrosion: new analytical methodology", Restaurator, 25 (2004) 94-103. M. Strlič, J. Kolar: "Size Exclusion Chromatography of cellulose in LiCl/DMAc. A Review.", J. Biochem. Biophys. Meth., 56 (2003) 265-279.

website : http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sustainableheritage/