This is a first Call for Papers for the fifth international T2M conference, with the theme 'Heritage and Design,' to be held in Helmond (near Eindhoven), in the Netherlands. After our successful conference in Paris this year (with 175 attendants), individual paper and entire session proposals are now invited, either on the conference theme, or on any other topic from the broad domain of transport and mobility history. Both 'Design' and 'Heritage' direct our attention to the artefact and its context of production, use and re-use, in the latter case either as a museum exhibit or as an object of leisure consumption by 'amateurs.' However looked upon, recent scholarship in both Design History and Public History has pushed the 'user' or 'mobility consumer' into the centre of our analysis. Whereas the former studies the interaction between producers and consumers, the latter develops concepts of presenting transport and mobility as a lens to our current joys and chagrins in an increasingly 'liquid world' (Baumann). Submissions are invited, not only on what engineers know and how they know it (Vincenti), but also on the 'doings and sayings' (Schatzki) of the user and consumer. Recently, especially national and transnational (European) governments discovered the importance of making mobility history a part of cultural heritage. This conference, therefore, provides a platform for historians of technology, museum curators and design historians to join the debate about the cultural and material turn in mobility history, nurtured by T2M since its foundation. Because T2M wishes to provide a meeting space for all transport and mobility historians, proposals not directly related to the conference's main theme are welcome, as well.

Participants are encouraged, though not required, to organize panels either on the conference theme or on any other topic from the broad domain of transport and mobility history. A panel consists of a chair and normally up to three speakers and a commentator. The deadline for abstracts and a short cv (English only) is 31 March 2007: maximum one page for individual papers or one page per presentation within a session proposal, including a CV per person of max. 1 page as well. Session proposals should be accompanied by a separate one-page overview of the session, including chair and commentator and their CV's. Please send proposals to: submissions@t2m.org.

Submitters will be notified by 30 April 2007 whether their proposal has been accepted by the Programme Committee, and will then be requested to send in a full paper by 1 September 2007 at the latest. A CD-ROM will be sent beforehand to all participants so as to facilitate only short presentations with an emphasis on debate and discussion. Registration deadlines will be provided during the month of April 2007. At that time the registration fee will be known (and will not be higher than € 120 for non-members of the association). The conference will coincide with the internationally-renowned Dutch Design Week in nearby Eindhoven (with 60,000 visitors expected). The city of Helmond, on 15 km from Eindhoven, will support this event by organizing its own exhibition dedicated to design and heritage. This year, T2M celebrates its fifth consecutive annual conference. In cooperation with the city of Helmond a special social program is in the making dedicated to the efforts of the local and regional authorities to turn a small industrial town into a post-modern (and controversial) marvel of town planning and architecture within a European context. Part of this is the attempt to make the region around Eindhoven into one of the European hot spots of mobility design and heritage. Participants to this jubilee conference are therefore encouraged to bring their spouses and partners to make the conference into a truly memorable event.

For information on previous conferences and the T2M association, and for any other information, see www.t2m.org. Further details of the 2007 conference will be posted there in due course.