Every two years the Working Party on History of Chemistry (WPHC) of the European Chemical Society (EuChemS) organizes an international conference on the history of chemistry, open to colleagues from all over the world. The 12th International Conference on the History of Chemistry (12ICHC) will take place from July 29th to August 2nd, 2019 in Maastricht, one of the oldest cities of the Netherlands, which still has preserved much of its historical charm. The dates of the conference are chosen in such a way that those who are visiting the Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society (HSS) in Utrecht, The Netherlands, from 23 to 27 July 2019, can easily combine this with participation in 12ICHC.

The Conference will be hosted by Maastricht University (UM), a young university, founded in 1976, with a very international student population, and a strong research group in Science, Technology and Society (STS), including the history of science and technology. The conference will be sponsored by UM, the Royal Dutch Chemical Society and several other organizations.

The conference programme will include scientific sessions, key-note lectures, the WP business meeting, as well as social events such as excursions, receptions, and a conference dinner banquet. Key-note lectures will be given by Marco Beretta (Bologna University), Carsten Reinhardt (Bielefeld University) and Lissa Roberts (Twente University).

The Steering Organizing Committee encourages the submission of panel/session proposals, but also welcomes the submission of stand-alone papers. Session organizers and contributors are free to send their proposals on any topic on the history of chemistry, broadly constructed as the cluster of molecular sciences, industry, and technology. A non-exhaustive list of possible sessions could include historical papers on the development of all aspects of material and life sciences, such as:

• Chemistry, professors, textbooks and classrooms
• Teaching and didactics of history of chemistry
• Chemistry and law: controversies, expertise, counter-expertise, fraud and activism
• Environmental chemistry, energy and regulation
• Chemical industry, its transition towards a circular economy
• Spaces and sites of chemistry
• (Post)colonial perspectives on chemistry
• Chemistry and its businesses in a globalizing world
• Commodities and commodification 
• Modern chemistry and physics of semiconductors and nano-materials
• Chemistry and digital humanities; editions of manuscripts, etc.
• Instruments, collections and material culture
• Replication of historical experiments
• Periodic Table (2019 = International Year of the Periodic Table)
• Biographies, prosopographies, and databases
• Chemistry, war and exile
• Representation of chemistry, and visual cultures
• Chemistry in the age of the Anthropocene
• Early modern art and chemistry
• Alchemy, Chemistry and Early Modern Science and Medicine
• Gender and chemistry

The Steering Organizing Committee consists of Christoph Meinel, Universität Regensburg, and Ignacio Suay-Matallana, Universidad Miguel Hernández (chairs of the committee), Cyrus Mody, Maastricht University (Steering Organizing Committee), Brigitte Van Tiggelen, Science History Institute (chair of the WPHC), and Ernst Homburg, Maastricht University (chair of the Local Organizing Committee).

Important Dates:
Deadline for submitting proposals (both panels and individual papers): 15 January 2019.
Notification of acceptance: 15 March 2019.
Early bird registration: by 15 May 2019.
Conference dates: 29 July – 2 August 2019.