Birkbeck College, University of London, UK

Birkbeck College is ranked among the leading UK university institutions for its levels of national and international excellence in research in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. Founded in 1823 as the London Mechanics' Institution Birkbeck College was incorporated into the University of London by Royal Charter in 1920. Students registered at the College for University of London degrees are Internal Students of the University. Unlike other Colleges of the University of London Birkbeck not only provides a range of full-time postgraduate taught and research programmes for UK and international students, but fulfils a special mission also meeting the needs of over 5000 mature part-time evening students reading for first or higher degrees.

In this project, Birkbeck College acts as general coordinator (main partner), participating through its School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, and more specifically, the Thermal Methods and Conservation Science Laboratory. This department specializes in thermo-analytical methods applied to the conservation of cultural materials and has wide experience in this field. It has worked with the Courtauld Institute of Art, Tate Gallery (London), Opificio delle Pietre Dure (Florence) and the School of Conservation in Copenhagen. It coordinated the European project (EV5V-CT94-0548), that developed a dosimeter which can evaluate damage to paintings inside galleries and museums.

The role of Birkbeck College will be both to act as coordinator and in a scientific capacity. It will provide paint tempera dosimeters (as developed in the ERA project) and extend the capabilities of the damage dosimeters by applying these coatings to piezoelectric quartz crystals (PQCs). Analysis work will also be undertaken of the artificially aged paint temperas and coatings using thermo-analytical and spectroscopic techniques. Thermal stability parameters will be obtained. The laboratory will also provide to the sites where required existing poly(ethyleneimine) coated PQC system. This was developed in a previous EU project for monitoring RH and T in collaboration with QuartzTech (subcontractor) and was very successful. The system operated continuously for over 9 months and provided useful information on changing RH and T gradients across paintings. Collaboration will continue in this project for the development of damage dosimeters based on PQCs.