DRT Society

(by Manuel Sintubin)

In 1976 Henk Zwart, Richard Lisle, Gordon Lister and Paul Williams organised a meeting at the Geologisch en Mineralogisch Instituut der Rijksuniversiteit Leiden (The Netherlands) on Fabrics, Microtextures and Microtectonics. Their aim was to ‘bring together as many as possible of the people active in this field; not only geologists but also material scientists from other disciplines’ (Lister et al., 1977). In 1985, at the 5th meeting in Utrecht (The Netherlands) a biannual tradition has been installed. Eversince, the meeting is hosted every two years by a different European university. In 1999, at the 12th meeting in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse (Germany), the conference series got its brand name ‘Deformation mechanisms, Rheology and Tectonics’ (Dresen & Handy, 2011) or DRT.

The DRT meetings are devoted to the study of deformation behaviour and rheology of minerals, rocks and materials. Dialogue is encouraged on all scales of field, experimental and theoretical studies of rock deformation. DRT aims to provide the main forum in Europe where field geologists, experimentalists and modellers could debate the problems and questions posed by natural structures and microstructures (Schmid et al. 1999).

Past DRT meetings were held at:

• 1.  1976 – Leiden, The Netherlands
• 2.  1979 – Barcelona, Spain
• 3.  1981 – Göttingen, Germany
• 4.  1982 – Zürich, Switzerland
• 5.  1985 – Utrecht, The Netherlands
• 6.  1987 – Uppsala, Sweden
• 7.  1989 – Leeds, U.K.
• 8.  1991 – Montpellier, France
• 9.  1993 – Graz, Austria
• 10. 1995 – Prague, Czech Republic
• 11. 1997 – Basel, Switzerland
• 12. 1999 – Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, Germany
• 13. 2001 – Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands
• 14. 2003 – Saint Malo, France
• 15. 2005 – Zürich, Switzerland
• 16. 2007 – Milano, Italy
• 17. 2009 – Liverpool-Manchester, U.K.
• 18. 2011 – Oviedo, Spain
• 19. 2013 – Leuven, Belgium
• 20. 2015 – Aachen, Germany
• 21.2017 – Inverness, U.K.
• 22.2019 – Tübingen, Germany.