The Plastics Heritage Congress 2019 - History, Limits and Possibilities, Lisbon

We are living in a time of increasing dependence on and encounters with synthetic materials, such as plastics, in our day-to-day life.

The Plastics Heritage Congress 2019, which general theme is "Plastics Heritage: History, Limits and Possibilities” intends to emphasize the synthetic material’s "plasticity" that makes them crucial in today’s globalized world and to understand the chameleon capability of plastics, their limits and possibilities.

The Plastics Heritage Congress 2019 is organized by Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia/Interuniversity Center for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT) in Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal, at Museu da Farmácia. It will be the fifth conference in a series which was founded by the German Society of Plastics History, having now the patronage of the recently founded Plastics Heritage European Association (PHEA).

This congress aims to address plastics history and heritage by encouraging papers that contribute to a deeper understanding of the socio-economic culture and material culture of historic polymeric materials (Hipoms) in their various representations and functions in society.

The main theme embraces the concepts of history, limits and possibilities of plastics heritage as organizing principles, thus perceiving their impact on the consumer and their technical and scientific developments. The programme committee suggests the following non-exhaustive sub-themes for contributors of individual papers, and posters:

• Plastics history (historic polymeric materials [Hipoms] manufacturing, engineering, companies)
• Plastics heritage (Hipoms in art, design, everyday use, technical objects and architecture)
• Collecting Hipom objects
• Conservation of Hipoms (artefacts, technical heritage, material characterization)
• Documentation and reproduction (archives, data bases, digital scanning, 3D-printing etc.)
• Plastics limits (degradation, waste problems, environmental impacts, history of social interactions)
• Plastics and emotions: impact on consumers and design personalisation.