The Third IUTAM Symposium on Creep in Structures was held at Leicester University in September 1980 thereby continuing the tradition of a ten yearly review of progress in structural creep initiated by the previous symposia held at Stanford University in 1960 and Chalmers University in 1970. The thirty eight papers and their discussions cont­ ained in this volume testify to the vigour of research into the creep of structures at the present time. During the last ten years a gradual change of emphasis has occurred in creep research from studies of deformation and stability towards the description of continuum damage and creep crack propagation. At the same time design techniques have developed based upon reference stress techniques and bounding theorems, and a continued interest has been maintained in the development of constitutive equations and in stability studies. All these developments are reflected in the compos­ ition of the papers in the volume and in the discussions and reviews.