News

News and updates from Odeuropa (Spring, 2025)

Dear friends of Odeuropa,

It seems incredible, but it has already been well over a year since we celebrated the successful conclusion of our EU project at the Smell Culture Fair in Amsterdam in December 2023. But while the project has formally ended, the Odeuropa team never stopped their work in olfactory heritage and sensory mining. 

We’ve been involved in many activities during this time and as a result we have a lot of news we want to share with you. To start off, three special highlights:

Odeuropa at the 2025 World Expo in Osaka, Japan

Odeuropa has been selected by the European Union to be featured in its pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka 2025! This is a great honour as we are one of only three research projects representing the EU in Osaka. Three members of the Odeuropa consortium (Raphael Troncy, Cecilia Bembibre, and Inger Leemans) will be travelling to Japan for one week in late April to participate in the Expo, present lectures, offer smellwalks, and visit several of the pioneering ‘100 most significant cultural smellmarks of Japan‘. But even after we return home, we will still be ‘present’ at the EU’s exhibition until the Expo ends, in the form of a AI-powered ‘visual avatar’ of our project lead which will interact with visitors to answer questions and explain Odeuropa in more detail. And of course the exhibit will also feature a number of heritage scents, generously supported by IFF.

2025 Osaka World Expo
Odeuropa’s exhibition area at the 2025 Osaka World Expo

Odeuropa wins Art and Olfaction Award

The Art and Olfaction Award is a highly competitive and selective international prize that is designed to raise interest and awareness for  active independent, artisan and experimental perfumers from all  countries. The awards are organised and run by The Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles. We were thus delighted to find out last year that we had become the recipient of the  2024 Art and Olfaction award for “Contribution to Scent Culture”. Sofia Colette Ehrich (Odeuropa) and Bernardo Fleming (IFF) were present at the award ceremony in Lisbon to accept the ‘Golden Pear’ on behalf of the entire Odeuropa team.

Sofia Colette Ehrich (Odeuropa) and Bernardo Fleming (IFF) accepting the Golden Pear for our Art and Olfaction award in Lisbon (Credit: João Inocêncio Gomes for The Institute for Art and Olfaction).

SmellWise Doctoral Network Application

Last autumn, we submitted a large, consortial application with 21 European partners for an EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network (SmellWise: Training Experts in Smell Culture and Olfactory Heritage) on scent education.

SmellWise aims to address the historical neglect of olfaction in European knowledge culture by training 12 PhD candidates over 36 months (2026-29) to become experts in smell culture and olfactory heritage. The initiative will bring together academia, fragrance industries, cultural heritage institutes, and creative sectors to develop innovative frameworks and technologies for researching and educating about smell as a cultural phenomenon. By offering specialized training in perfumery, smell history, AI-driven odor analytics, neurobiology, heritage science, scent design, and olfactory storytelling, SmellWise aspires to produce a new generation of “smellwise” experts capable of integrating diverse knowledge domains to enhance public appreciation of olfaction’s role in wellbeing, cultural practices, and sustainable development. We should hear the outcome of this grant application in the Spring. The EU Doctoral Network is a highly competitive funding scheme – but we’re holding our thumbs!

We still have a great deal more news to share so we’ve collected these as brief notes in the sections below:

Olfactory Heritage and Storytelling

  • The Historical Scent Collection has been distributed to a number of different GLAMs and creative partners who are now working with the smell kit. For example, the new art gallery “Nāsī” (literally – in the nostril) opened its doors in creative house “Viskaļi” in Rīga, Latvia with an exhibition showcasing the smells in the Odeuropa historical scent collection and by paintings inspired by the scents by the artist Santa Kristiana Krūze.
  • Odeuropa has undertaken the mission to store a Heritage Library with the Osmothèque International Archive of Perfumes: As this is an unprecedented step for the fragrance industries / olfactory artists and the Osmotheque, it took us some time to develop the format. But we are now happy to announce that the contracts by the major parties have all been signed and so we can move forward with the planning of the launch
  • In the province of Frisia, in the Netherlands, the ‘sounds and smells of the countryside’ have been added to the heritage policy agenda. The Dutch Odeuropa team is forming a research group in collaboration with the Fryske Akademy and the Meertens Institute, to investigate heritage smells in Frisia.
  • With IFF, we are planning an olfactory exhibit with the Henriette Polak Museum in Zutphen, the Netherlands for 2025 – the exhibit is specifically targeted for children to engage with modern art.
  • Dutch artist Boris van Berkum has been installed as a guest researcher at KNAW Humanities Cluster, to work on his project Eau de Colonial.
  • Sofia Collette Ehrich is collaborating with the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum on a multisensory activity for their exhibition Smelling The Bouquet: Plants and Scents in the Garden set to open May 2nd, 2025. Ehrich and curator Nezka Pfeifer will speak about the collaboration at Museum Next’s Museums & Public Programs Summit in May. 
  • The International Fragrance Association UK is hosting its first olfactory heritage event on June 12th 2025. Scents of Time, hosted by Odeuropa members Will Tullett and Cecilia Bembibre, will convene perfumers, heritage professionals and policy makers to explore the landscape of smell heritage in the United Kingdom.

New projects and proposals related to Odeuropa

  • Odeuropa’s sister project POEM (The Poetics of Olfaction in Early Modernity) is moving towards its second year. 15 November 2024 we organized a workshop on ‘Odeurs Trouvées: How smell can boost the impact of teaching literature in secondary schools. POEM has now also published a call for proposals for a conference on The Poetics of Olfaction, 1500–1800 which will be held 28–29 January, 2026 in Leiden. The project has just opened a new position for a postdoctoral researcher.
  • The Dutch National Board for Heritage Research (NOE) is helping to draft a strategic agenda for the coming 5 years in which sensory heritage will be included as an urgent theme.
  • Dr Will Tullett has collaborated with Dr Xuelei Huang at the University of Edinburgh on the Royal Society Edinburgh funded project The Smell of Scotland, which has involved three workshops with GLAMs in Scotland on the smells interaction with urban, culinary, and botanical heritage. 
  • The Knowledge Transfer Office of the KNAW and the Vrije Universiteit IXA subsidy desk are helping us to set up a legal entity for olfactory storytelling in a heritage context. It’s a slow process, but we are also making good steps here.

Lectures and Presentations

  • Victoria-Anne Michel was part of the organisation of the exhibition and conference Les Odeurs Capitales, held by the air quality monitoring association in Normandy, ATMO Normandie.
  • Vincent Christlein presented “How to see smells in artworks?”, at Pint of Science, Kilians Pub, Nuremberg
  • Inger Leemans helped to organize and gave a nose-on presentation for the academic forum on the Spice Route together with Indonesian embassy and Negeri Rempah foundation which is striving to add the Spice route to the UNESCO world heritage listings.
  • Pasquale Lisena showcased a demo with the title of “Multisensory AI with Odeuropa”, focusing on the Odeuropa Smell Explorer, at the World AI Cannes Festival (WAICF)
  • Will Tullett will be giving a keynote at the University of Cambridge conference ‘Scents and Imagination’ in June.

Awards and Recognition

  • Odeuropa’s project leader, Inger Leemans, was nominated as one of six finalists in the Netherlands in 2024 for the prestigious Huibregtsen Prize. The prize is awarded for a recent research project that combines scientific quality and innovation with significant societal impact. (please see short video of our project) 
  • Odeuropa was nominated by Research Data Netherlands as one of three finalists in the Humanities and Social Sciences for the 2024 Dutch Data Prize for its work on the European Olfactory Knowledge Graph. 

Publications

  • Zinnen M., Christlein V.: “Odeuropa und der Duft der Bilder”, In: Schönere Heimat (2024), p. 225-229, ISSN: 0177-4492, https://heimat-bayern-kaufladen.de/Schoenere-Heimat-2024-Heft-3/SW10437
  • Patoliya, V., Zinnen, M., Maier, A., Christlein, V.: Smell and Emotion: Recognising Emotions in Smell-related Artworks (2024), in: DH2024, https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.04592
  • Mathias Zinnen, Prathmesh Madhu, Inger Leemans, Vincent Christlein et al., ‘Smelly, dense, and spreaded: The Object Detection for Olfactory References (ODOR) datase’t, Expert Systems with Applications 255(87) June 2024:124576. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.eswa.2024.124576
  • Hussian, A., Zinnen, M., Tran, TMH, Maier, A., Christlein, V.: “Gesture Classification in Artworks Using Contextual Image Features”. In: DH2024. https://cris.fau.de/publications/330523845/ 
  • Huang H., Zinnen M., Liu S., Maier A., Christlein V.: “Scene Classification on Fine Arts with Style Transfer” In: SUMAC ’24: Proceedings of the 6th workshop on the analySis, Understanding and proMotion of heritAge Contents 2024, https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689094.3689468 
  • Ehrich, S. C. “Crafting Intentional Scents: Enriching Cultural Heritage with Educational Olfactory Reproductions” In: Amsterdam Museum Journal. Edition #3 (RE)PRODUCTION. https://assets.amsterdammuseum.nl/downloads/Sofia-Collette-Ehrich.pdf 
  • Liu S., Huang H.,  Zinnen M., Maier A., Christlein V. “Novel Artistic Scene-Centric Datasets for Effective Transfer Learning in Fragrant Spaces”. In: ECCV 2024 Workshops. ECCV 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.11701
  • Menini S. “Semantic Frame Extraction in Multilingual Olfactory Events”. In Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024), pages 14622–14627, Torino, Italia. ELRA and ICCL. https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.1273/ 

Press Coverage

We continue to get attention from the press, even after the end of the project:

And that’s it! And next time we promise not to wait so long before we share news of our events and activities with you.

Reflections: Smell Culture Fair

On November 28th, 2023, over 140 people joined Odeuropa to celebrate its conclusion with one final bash: the Smell Culture Fair. The fair was a unique and engaging experience where we presented the project’s final results, trained heritage professionals, perfumers and other interested parties in techniques and best practices, and provided a space for networking for future collaborations. It brought together a varied, creative, range of experts on smell from inside and outside of academia.

The day kicked off in the iconic Trippenhuis, home of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, in Amsterdam with a plenary session consisting firstly of informative presentations about Odeuropa and secondly with a panel discussion providing various perspectives of smell culture studies. The plenary session started with Odeuropa’s principal investigator, Inger Leemans, who gave an overview of Odeuropa’s achievements such as the Smell Explorer, Encyclopedia of Smell History and Heritage, and the Olfactory Storytelling Toolkit and how these outcomes contribute to the field of smell culture studies. Inger also invited others to present Odeuropa’s collaborations. Bernardo Fleming, creative manager at IFF, presented the IFF x Odeuropa Historical Scent Collection, a smell kit that includes twelve historically informed scents developed for Odeuropa’s olfactory events. Isabelle Chazot, head of the Scientific Committee at the Osmothèque, Conservatoire International des parfums, presented the Heritage Smell Library which will safeguard a collection of Odeuropa’s heritage smells which will be housed at the institution’s archive.

Round table discussion during the Smell Culture Fair plenary session. Photo credit and licence: Suzanne Blanchard (CC-BY).

Following the informative presentations, four different smell culture experts offered different perspectives of smell culture studies. Asifa Majid (cognitive science), Simon Niedenthal (game studies), Alison Heritage (heritage policy) and Gregorio Sola Vela (perfumer) provided us with short statements on their work, which was then followed by a lively panel discussion chaired by Odeuropa researcher Cecilia Bembibre. The panel enforced that smell culture can inform us about heritage, history and culture in various ways revealing that smell can help us think about language and can add and encourage play in the world around us as well as diversify collaborations. Towards the end of the panel, questions from the audience were taken which led to dynamic and interdisciplinary discussions, setting the tone for the rest of the day. The entire plenary session is now available for viewing on YouTube:

Overall, one key aspect that stood out during the entirety of the Smell Culture Fair was the impulse for connection. It was inspiring to witness how everyone present felt the need to connect with one another, bridging the gaps between different backgrounds and disciplines. The level of engagement and interest from attendees confirmed that the field of smell culture studies is generating a broader interest and gaining the recognition it deserves.

Following the plenary session, fair attendees were able to join two rounds of hands-on, nose-on workshops. Below we offer a few impressions of the different workshops.

Breakout Sessions and Workshops:

Hands-on Training – Olfactory Storytelling Toolkit:

Of the 140 attendees of the fair, 100 participated in the hands-on training of the Olfactory Storytelling Toolkit: A ‘How-To’ Guide for Working with Smells in Museums and Heritage Institutions (OST), led by Sofia Collette Ehrich and Alex McQueen. The training was divided into two parts, firstly an informative presentation about the OST and the value of olfactory storytelling in museums, and secondly, a hands-on activity with an emphasis on creating one’s own (imaginative) olfactory event using the OST’s appendix checklist – a 13 page resource that helps guide readers through using the content of the OST.

Sofia Collette Ehrich and Alex McQueen during the OST Hands-on Training session at the Smell Culture Fair. Photo credit and licence: Suzanne Blanchard (CC-BY).

During the presentation, there were two opportunities for smell explorations where participants were invited to interact with historically informed scents developed by Odeuropa in collaboration with Museum Ulm for the Follow Your Nose! guided tours: the smell of a Pomander and Hell. Interaction with heritage scents added a nose-on understanding of what adding scents to your event can do. For example, many participants enjoyed the scent of Hell while others found it extremely foul. This showed participants that interaction with smells creates a subjective experience that can affect the intended outcome as well as a conversation starter as the group immediately started chatting and making connections with each other upon smelling. 

In the second half of the workshop, both above-mentioned scents and their connected histories, were used as inspiration for creating one’s own olfactory event using the appendix checklist. We were met with fantastic and diverse ideas for hypothetical olfactory events that worked with both digital and physical collections. These spontaneously creative ideas showed that participants were easily able to create olfactory events using the appendix checklist alone reinforcing its effectiveness, accessibility, and workability. The intention was for the workshop to be an impulse, a catalyst for engagement, sensing, and reflection – and it worked. The participants were enthusiastic and inspired and we hope some of them will be able to use the OST in their own work. Download your own copy of the Olfactory Storytelling Toolkit (PDF).

Hands-on Training – Working with Existing Scents in GLAM Collections:

While the hands-on training on the OST focused on adding new scents to museum galleries, the hands-on training Working with Existing Scents in GLAMs focused on working with objects or spaces that have an inherent scent. Various olfactory objects were presented to the participants to smell in addition to a mini smellwalk that was led through the Trippenhuis library by Odeuropa researcher, Victoria-Anne Michel. The focus of this workshop was to ignite a spark that then ignited a flame of creativity and exploration in participants to explore spaces and objects through their nose.

Victoria-Anne Michel and Cecilia Bembibre during the Hands-on Training session at the Smell Culture Fair. Photo credit and licence: Suzanne Blanchard (CC-BY).
Smell Culture Fair attendee Claire Dobbin interacting with an olfactory object. Photo credit: Suzanne Blanchard (CC-BY).

The workshop, led by Victoria-Anne Michel and Cecilia Bembibre, started with introductions, which quickly turned into an exchange of ideas and opportunities of reflection. We were excited by how participants were quick to share multisensory impressions of the objects.  They connected with the scents and the objects on a deep level, allowing their imaginations run wild and their narratives to take shape. The workshop taught us that working with scents and olfactory objects and spaces can stimulate rich discussions, insights, and build bridges between different people and perspectives.

Data Exploration Session:

Raphaël Troncy during the Hands-on Training session at the Smell Culture Fair. Photo credit Suzanne Blanchard and licence (CC-BY).

During the Data Exploration sessions, participants were invited to explore the corpus of olfactory information extracted from texts and images throughout the Odeuropa project. In the image demonstrator participants could query the database of smell-related objects detected in a corpus of nearly 100k images from various museum collections and generate basic statistics such as object co-occurrences and historical distribution of objects found. With the text demonstrator participants were invited to search for specific smell descriptors, sources or emotions mentioned in the text, and, similar to the image demonstrator, generate statistics about their occurrences over time. Furthermore, participants were introduced to the Odeuropa Smell Explorer, where textual and visual references are merged and are easily accessible without technical knowledge required. Finally, we presented the Encyclopedia of Smell History and Heritage where stories and storylines are drawn out of the data collected by the technical teams of the Odeuropa project. Many attendees of the session reported that these training sessions helped them better understand how they could effectively use the Odeuropa tools in their own work. The video of the first data exploration session (both sessions covered the same topics) is available on YouTube:

The data explorations sessions were led by Vincent Christlein, Pasquale Lisena, Stefano Menini, Inna Novalija, Sara Tonelli, Raphaël Troncy, William Tullett, and Mathias Zinnen.

Smell Expo & Matchmaking:

Alexandra Skedzuh sniffing Eef Stalman’s olfactory artwork, Scentimental Memory during the Smell Expo at the Smell Culture Fair. Photo credit and licence: Suzanne Blanchard (CC-BY).

After the workshops, fair attendees were invited to view the smell expo and matchmaking session to network in a casual setting. 

The Smell Expo and Matchmaking part of the day proved to be extremely effective in its goals. Scholars, industry professionals, and business representatives were all able to connect and exchange ideas under one roof. The expo consisted of olfactory artists, perfumers and heritage institutions. Additionally, there were 12 research posters that showed the variability of smell research. This part of the event allowed international individuals from different disciplines to come together and discuss new possibilities of scent culture.

Mathias Zinnen and others looking at posters on smell research during the Smell Expo at the Smell Culture Fair. Photo credit and licence: Suzanne Blanchard (CC-BY).

Odeuropa Smell Culture Fair Feedback Questionnaire:

Following the event, we asked participants for feedback via a 25 question survey. The outcome of the survey was positive and corroborated our own findings: that the fair attendees were made up of an interdisciplinary and diverse career background. To name a few, conservators, data scientists, curators, art historians, perfumers, journalists, archeologists, sensory consultants, cultural heritage experts, historians, aromatherapists attended our event. We look forward to receiving more data in the coming weeks, but for now we can report that after the event 93,5% said they would recommend an event like this to other colleagues and 96,8% said that they envision working with smell/olfactory heritage in the near future.

Takeaways:

All in all, the Odeuropa Smell Culture Fair was a celebration of the rich interdisciplinary community of practitioners and researchers who work with smell and the potential for that community – and the tools that Odeuropa have given them – to reshape the future of culture, heritage, and history. One big lesson that emerged from our project is the interdependence between academia and the various stakeholders in the field, including the industry and GLAMs. The collaboration between these different sectors is vital. Academia provides the reflective space for critical thinking and advancing knowledge, while the industry and GLAMs bring practical insights, resources, and real-world applications.

The Odeuropa Team at the Smell Culture Fair. Photo credit and licence: Suzanne Blanchard (CC-BY).

Reflection and action are not mutually exclusive; they need, benefit, and enrich each other. The closure event served as a steppingstone for future collaborations, and the desire to foster these connections is palpable. We recognize the significance of nurturing these relationships, as we believe that the impact of our research can only grow when we continue to collaborate and build upon the groundwork we have laid together.

Many thanks to Victoria-Anne Michel, Mathias Zinnen and Sofia Collette Ehrich for their input and impressions of the event and to Thom Goris for his support in making this event possible as well as to the Trippenhuis for hosting us. Thanks also goes to the rest of the Odeuropa team for organising such fantastic and engaging workshops throughout the day!