Plastics in Museum Collections - a study of their chemical and physical degradation using a System Dynamics approach

This project will view museum artefacts in a new way: as complex systems which undergo multiple, inter-related chemical and physical processes. Focussing on plastic objects, which are found in increasing numbers in museum collections, and present significant problems in relation to their stability, the successful student will conduct experiments that seek to understand these processes and their inter-relationships in more depth. The project is based at UCL, in partnership with the Museum of London and Lacerta Technology Ltd. The research will involve degradation experiments and laboratory-based materials analysis using techniques such as Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The student will also perform on-site analysis at the Museum of London using portable, non-destructive analytical techniques. This research aims to develop a new approach to understanding material degradation that can be applied in many fields, such as medicine or defence, and provide practical solutions for heritage professionals, such as providing guidance on controlling museum storage environments.

1. Academic beneficiaries: The CDT will develop scientific and engineering excellence in the domain of cultural heritage scientific and engineering research and more fundamentally in the enabling domains of imaging and sensing, visualisation, modelling, computational analysis and digital technology. While the CDT focusses on the complex materials and environments of the arts, heritage and archaeology, it will be broadly influential due to the range of novel methods and approaches to be developed in collaboration with the Diamond Light Source and the National Physical Laboratory. The establishment of a student and alumni-managed 'Heritage Science Research Network', will enable CDT's cross-disciplinarity to bridge EPSRC subject boundaries impacting scholarly research in the arts and humanities and social sciences.
2. Heritage beneficiaries: The CDT will have a transformational effect on public heritage institutions by dovetailing 'Data creation', 'Data to knowledge' and 'Knowledge to enterprise' research strands. The resulting advances in understanding, interpretation, conservation, presentation, management, communication, visualisation of heritage, and improved visitor participation and engagement will lead to significantly improved public service and value creation in this sector. This will sustainably boost the cultural heritage tourism sector which requires significant heritage science capacity to maintain the UK's cultural assets, i.e. museum, library, archive and gallery collections and historic buildings. 15 globally leading heritage Partner institutions (both national and international) will contribute to dissemination through established and new heritage networks e.g. the EU Heritage Portal (http://www.heritageportal.eu/).
3. Industry, particularly three crucial sectors: (i) sensors and instrumentation, which underpin a wide range of industrial activity despite the small size (UK Sales £3Bn), and are a key enabling technology for successful economic growth: 70% of the revenues of FTSE 100 companies (sales of £120Bn) are in sectors that are highly dependent on instrumentation; (ii) creative industries, increasingly vital to the UK with 2M employees in creative jobs and the sector contributing £60Bn a year (7.3%) to the UK economy. Over the past decade, the creative sector has grown at twice the rate of the economy as a whole; (iii) heritage tourism sector contributing £7.4Bn p.a. to the UK economy and supporting 466,000 equivalent jobs. Without the CDT, this crucially important economy sector will experience an unsustainable loss of capacity. The impact will be achieved in collaboration with our Partners: Electronics, Sensors, Photonics KTN, TIGA and Qi3, a technology commercialisation, business development and knowledge transfer company.
4. Public: The intensive public engagement activities are built into CDT including dissemination and engagement events at heritage institutions, popular science conferences and fora, e.g. Cheltenham Science Festival, European Science Open Forum and British Science Festival, as well as events organised by the HEIs' Beacon projects (e.g. UCL Bright Club). Cross-cohort encouragement to engage in these events will realise the substantial potential for the CDT to popularise science and engineering. More widely, visitors and users of heritage will benefit from the development of new and more engaging presentation tools, and pervasive and mobile computing.
5. Policy: SEAHA will engage with policy makers, by contributing evidence to policies and research agendas (the PI is actively involved in the EU JPI Cultural Heritage and Global Change, in which she advised on the development of the EU Cultural Heritage Research Agenda endorsed on 22/03/2013) and develop policy briefings for governmental and parliamentary bodies. The CDT is also a strategically important development of the AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme ensuring continued global UK leadership in the SEAHA domain.