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ERC Consolidator Grant to the Division

Sofia Jonsson

 , 2017-12-19

NUCLEARWATERS develops a groundbreaking new approach to studying the history of nuclear energy

A few weeks ago Per Högselius got the good news that he was one of two researcher from KTH to receive an ERC Consolidator grant. His project NUCLEARWATERS will get funding for five years and at least six researcher will get an employment thanks to this. Per and his co-workers will explore nuclear history in a global perspective. If you know Swedish, you can read more about this here: ERC Consolidator Grants till två KTH-forskare | KTH

For those of you that don’t know Swedish, here comes the abstract from the application:

NUCLEARWATERS develops a groundbreaking new approach to studying the history of nuclear energy. Rather than interpreting nuclear energy history as a history of nuclear physics and radiochemistry, it analyses it as a history of water.

The project develops the argument that nuclear energy is in essence a hydraulic form of technology, and that it as such builds on centuries and even millennia of earlier hydraulic engineering efforts worldwide – and, culturally speaking, on earlier “hydraulic civilizations”, from ancient Egypt to the modern Netherlands. I investigate how historical watermanipulating technologies and wet and dry risk conceptions from a deeper past were carried on into the nuclear age. These risk conceptions brought with them a complex set of social and professional practices that displayed considerable inertia and were difficult to change – sometimes paving the way for disaster. Against this background I hypothesize that a water-centred nuclear energy history enables us to resolve a number of the key riddles in nuclear energy history and to grasp the deeper historical logic behind various nuclear disasters and accidents worldwide.

The project is structured along six work packages that problematize the centrality – and dilemma – of water in nuclear energy history from different thematic and geographical angles. These include in-depth studies of the transnational nuclear-hydraulic engineering community, of the Soviet Union’s nuclear waters, of the Rhine Valley as a transnational and heavily nuclearized river basin, of Japan’s atomic coastscapes and of the ecologically and politically fragile Baltic Sea region. The ultimate ambition is to significantly revise nuclear energy history as we know it – with implications not only for the history of technology as an academic field (and its relationship with environmental history), but also for the public debate about nuclear energy’s future in Europe and beyond.

 

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Sofia Jonsson

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Research

Occupy Climate Change (OCC!)! 

Sofia Jonsson

 , 2017-11-22

instead of studying the resilient subjects, we should “identify the actors and processes that produce the need to build resilience in the first place” (ibid.)

Northwest Washington, Washington, United States
Shot on Pennsylvania Ave near the Capitol. Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/cpAKc-G6lPg

We are happy to announce that the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory recently received a positive message from Formas. The project Occupy Climate Change!, proposed by Marco Armiero, is awarded almost 900.000 euros over three years. 

“OCC! explores how urban communities can respond to Loss and Damages by investigating new and insurgent citizenship practices and new types of knowledge. Focusing on the practices and experiments of grassroots organizations across different cases (New York, Rio, Istanbul, Naples, Stockholm), it aims to identify how these diverse, dynamic, self-organised responses to loss undo or embrace damage. This endeavor requires a critical appraisal of the highly contested narratives of societal resilience (Kaika, 2017). As Kaika argues, instead of studying the resilient subjects, we should “identify the actors and processes that produce the need to build resilience in the first place” (ibid.), engaging critically with the material basis reproducing injustice.” Summary taken from the project application, written by Marco Armiero.

To kick off this project a coffee talk together with Doreen Stabinsky is planned for late November this fall. Please visit the lab’s  Facebook page for more news, event updates and interesting articles. 

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Sofia Jonsson

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Research, The EHL

Sustainable communities and heritage politics beyond nature-culture divide – funding from Formas

Sofia Jonsson

 , 2017-11-17

Formas granted the divisions Kati Lindström funding for the project Sustainable communities and heritage politics beyond nature-culture divide: Heritage development as a strategy against depopulation in Japan. The project will start next year and run until the end of year 2020.

The aim is to analyse the use of heritage development as a possible strategy against depopulation, by comparing how different types of heritage relate to the local communities. Governments often see heritage development as a means for the depopulating communities to acquire a more stable economic footing. While there is sufficient proof that especially world heritage nomination has brought an economic boost to many locations, there is also evidence that this is not necessarily a guaranteed long-term strategy. However, there is no clear understanding which heritage types function best in case of depopulation and how does depopulation influence the maintenance of heritage in the long run.

The project carries out qualitative analyses of 7 heritage nominations from four different categories (cultural landscape, natural, industrial and archaeological heritage) in Japan and asks which of the four types benefits the related communities best (economically, socially,culturally), how they are impacted by depopulation and changing community structures and how do local governments envision heritage maintenance with reduced population. It is expected that the results of the study serve as reference to heritage developers in depopulating communities worldwide. The study will be carried out from the perspective of environmental humanities, using various methods and sources from macroeconomic data to stakeholder interviews, participant observation, focus groups, media and site analyses.

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Sofia Jonsson

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Research

Is there life on Mars?

Sofia Jonsson

 , 2017-10-30
“Rising Green”. Painting in acrylic on canvas by German sci-fi artist Frank Lewecke

Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) recently granted the Divisions Sabine Höhler’s application Life on Mars: The Science and Fiction of Terraforming and the Future of Planet Earth. The project will start in the beginnig of 2018 and run for three years.

A procjet page is coming up, but in the meantime please read the applicatoin abstract for more information on this project:

The Anthropocene, the geological age of humanity, is associated with a key feature: the power of technoscientific intervention into the Earth’s environment. This transformative potential became apparent in the second half of the twentieth century when the science and the fiction of “terraforming”, of turning extreme or extraterrestrial into Earth-like environments, gained traction. Hopes of venturing into Space became as pervasive as perceptions of humans overexploiting and polluting the Earth. The popular vision of settling sustainable communities on Mars saw an upswing in the recent decade of anthropogenic global environmental
change.

This project explores the science and fiction of Mars settlement with the help of terraforming as a creation of new environments in Space as well as blueprints for the technological reconstruction of the Earth’s environment. The aim is to describe the Anthropocene not simply as an epoch that endangers the Earth but primarily as an epoch that essentially transformed the understanding of life to a minimalist principle of survival through infinite metabolic conversion and technological substitution. This understanding conjoined images of recreation and creation, of paradisiacal pasts and eco-technological futures. The question whether ‘postplanetary’ life, life that is not tied to a specific planet but transcends planetary boundaries, will be possible and desirable may become one of the most challenging questions of our future.

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Sofia Jonsson

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Research

Cosmopolitanism from the Margins project comes to an end

Sofia Jonsson

 , 2017-10-19
‘Street Art is Boring’. Photo: Tindra Thor © London, November 2015

The VR funded project Cosmopolitanism from the Margins, lead by Miyase Christensen and hosted by the Division, recently ended. The planned final product of the project was a guest-edited​ journal special issue “Postnormative Cosmopolitanism: Voice, Space and Politics”  for the International Communication Gazette, which can be found here: http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/gazb/79/6-7

The journal includes an article written by Miyase together with doctoral student Tindra Thor, about street art and graffiti in Stockholm and London. The article is based on two case studies and discuss how graffiti and street art provide forms of expressive cosmopolitanism in reclaiming voice and reciprocity in the city.

The purpose of the Cosmopolitanism project was to bring together humanities and social sciences perspectives (from cultural cosmopolitanism, urban studies, visual geopolitics to political economy, queer theory, mediation, etc.) to address various political, social, cultural questions.

–  Our conversations in the hallway, in the kitchen, and in gatherings outside the office; our chats over politics, life, media, Stockholm and more! during lunchtime have all been greatly inspiring throughout the life of this​ project in this international​ division, says Miyase

The project started in 2012 and ended this year. Miyase will now continue the work with the Division as project member of Arctic governance and the questions of ´fit´ in an era of globally transformative change: a critical geopolitics of regional international cooperation funded by Formas.

 

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Sofia Jonsson

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Research