Location: Mathematical Institute, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG
Date: Saturday 21 February 2026
Time: 10:30am - 17:00pm GMT
Booking: Registration to attend this conference is free, although voluntary contributions to support HAPP and enable its activities to continue into the future can be made at this link below:
Contribute to Support HAPP
Booking is required to attend the conference as below:
Contact: If you have any questions about the event or booking please contact HAPP on happ-centre@stx.ox.ac.uk
Heritage physics involves the application of scientific techniques and technologies to answer questions about our cultural heritage and to enable our understanding and conservation of this. As scientific techniques have evolved across the past century from the earliest methods for age determination to modern day composition analysis, these have increased our ability to deepen our knowledge about ancient and historical artefacts as well as to preserve and restore them. This conference will survey the history of how the illumination of the past has developed as new fields of physics have progressed.
The programme for the day is below:
MORNING CHAIR:
10.30am: WELCOME
10.40am: Dr Emma Brownlee (Historic England) - Seventy Years of Radiocarbon Revolutions in Archaeology
11.30am: Dr Lucia Burgio (Victoria and Albert Museum) - When Science Meets Art: A Journey with X-Ray Fluorescence
12.20pm: Professor Malcolm Cooper (University of Warwick) - Synchrotron Radiation and Cultural Heritage Studies
1.15pm: LUNCH BREAK
AFTERNOON CHAIR:
2.15pm: Professor David Bradley (University of Surrey) - Radiation for the Preservation and Analysis of Cultural Heritage Objects
3.05pm: Dr Nichole Sheldrick (University of Leicester) - Archaeology from Above: The History and Use of Satellite Imagery for Heritage Documentation, Research and Protection
4pm: TEA/COFFEE BREAK
4.30pm: SUMMARY OF THE DAY'S PROCEEDINGS - Professor Adam Gibson (University College London)
There will be a conference dinner at St Cross College at 6.30 pm following the end of the conference with an after-dinner talk by Professor Clive Ruggles (University of Leicester) on heritage sites as ancient observatories around the world, including Stonehenge.
Booking to attend the conference dinner can be made here.
Kindly sponsored by three Physics alumni of the University of Oxford, Dr Ian Dunbar, the Gerrards Cross Philosophy Group, Dr Ken Hartley, the Department of Physics - University of Oxford, the Institute of Physics London & South East Branch, and many other HAPP supporters.
