CfP: Plastics Heritage Conference, May 2019 - Lisbon, Portugal


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.
All proposals must be in English. For advice on preparing your submission and the conference presentation, please consult the guidelines. In addition to the scientific programme, the congress will include social events.

Proposal Guidelines

Individual paper proposals must include: (1) a 200-350-word abstract; and (2) a one-page CV. Abstracts should include the author’s name and email address, affiliation, a short descriptive title, a concise statement of the thesis, a brief discussion of the sources, and a summary of the major conclusions. If you are submitting a paper proposal dealing with a particular subtheme, please indicate this in your proposal.
In preparing your paper, remember that presentations are not full-length articles. Depending on the number of papers in the session, you will have no more than 16-20 minutes to speak, which is roughly equivalent to six – eight double-spaced typed pages. For more suggestions about preparing your conference presentation, please consult the guidelines at the conference website. Contributors are encouraged to submit full-length versions of their papers after the congress for consideration by the peer-reviewed Journal of Plastics History e-plastory.
Session proposals must include (1) an abstract of the session (200-350 words at maximum), listing the proposed papers and a session chairperson; (2) abstracts for each paper (200-350 words); (3) a one-page CV for each contributor and chairperson. Sessions should consist of at least one set of presentations – but no more than four time slots of 90 minutes – and they may include three or four papers in each, which might extend series of successive sections over more than one day. Proposing a commentator – instead of the fourth presenter – is also possible. The programme committee reserves the right to relocate papers to different themes and add papers to sessions. We also encourage proposing roundtables and other "untraditional" as well as experimental session formats. Whatever the session format will be, organisers and chairs are expected to reserve enough time for general discussion between the presenters and audience.

Poster proposals must include (1) a 200-350-word abstract; and (2) a one-page CV. Abstracts should include the author’s name and email address, a short descriptive title, a concise statement of the thesis, a brief discussion of the sources, and a summary of the major conclusions. Please, indicate one of the specified subthemes for your poster.