Ten Stockholm Archipelago Lectures

Sofia Jonsson

, 2021-11-01

The Stockholm Archipelago Lectures are part of the public activities of the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory and have been since 2012. It was initiated as an event that marks the presence of the EHL at the KTH Campus. This Monday we look forward to our 10th lecture by looking back in time, finishing off with the announcement of this year’s keynote speaker.

In September 2012 the historian and geographer David Lowenthal visited the Division to give a series of talks. They were entitled the Archipelago Lectures, referring in part to the Stockholm Archipelago, but also to David’s career long professional and personal interest in islands, in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, in the Isle of Man where he had a summer house, and elsewhere. (From: Sverker Sörlin in “Defining Humanities – Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH“Report 2017-2018)

The Archipelago lecture was the first major public event of the KTH Environmental Humanities Lab and has become an annual institution every fall. In the early years the lectures were held at the KTH Campus, but for the 2018 lecture with Amitav Gosh on “The Great Uprooting: Migration and Movement in the Age of Climate Change” we moved to central Stockholm and Kulturhuset Stadsteatern. The event was announced in one of Sweden’s largest morning papers, Dagens Nyheter, and attracted our biggest audience so far. A little over 100 people came to listen to Amitav Gosh.

In 2019 the Archipelago Lecture was organized in collaboration with the workers educational associations ABF and the independent opinion group Arenagruppen. “What should socialism mean in the 21st century? An ecofeminist view” with Nancy Fraiser attracted over 200 people, who came to ABF to listen. The lecture was filmed and also streamed online for the first time without us knowing that this would soon be our new normal. Former EHL researcher Roberta Biasillo writes in the Biennial report “Integrative Humanities from the years 2019 in and 2020” Nancy Fraser “engaged with the audience and with us well beyond the time of the talk – we all sat and stood together, we ate next to each other and shook our hands. One year later, on 25 November 2020, we found ourselves online and it was no coincidence that the talk was on ideas and practices of care, repair, and restitution as ways to ensure just living conditions on Earth.”

In the first year of the pandemic we went online and welcomed Achille Mbembe as our Archipelago keynote speaker. From his home in South Africa he gave the lecture “Reflections on Planetary Habitability”. This became one of the EHL’s and the Division’s most visited single events so far, with over 500 people streaming it in real time.

This year we are happy to announce Kathryn Yusoff as our keynote speaker. Kathryn is a professor of inhuman geography at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of the acclaimed book “A billion black anthropocenes or none“. So, mark your calendars and check your connection – because on December 1 at 4.30 PM CET we are ready to go online again for the next Archipelago lecture.

Lectures from the past

September 9, 2012
“Reflections on the Environmental Humanities”
David Lowenthal, Professor Emeritus of Geography, University College London

September 11, 2013
“The Meltdown of a High Arctic Hunting Community”
Kirsten Hastrup, Professor of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen

October 9, 2014
“Environmental Racism as State-Sanctioned Violence”
Laura Pulido, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California

November 2, 2015
“The humanities and global change research: relationships necessary, absent and possible”
Noel Castree, Professor of Geography, University of Manchester, England, and the University of Wollongong, Australia

October 27, 2016
“AlterLife in the Aftermath of Industrial Chemicals”
Michelle Murphy, Professor of History and Women and Gender Studies, University of Toronto

October 5, 2017
“Connecting Dots in Toms River and Beyond”
Dan Fagin, award-winning author, and Professor of science journalism, New York University

September 26, 2018
“The Great Uprooting: Migration and Movement in the Age of Climate Change”
Amitav Ghosh, award-winning writer of historical fiction and non-fiction

October 7, 2019
“What should socialism mean in the 21st century? An ecofeminist view”
Nancy Fraiser, Professor, The New School for Social Research, New York

November 25, 2020
“Reflections on Planetary Habitability”
Achille Mbembe, Professor in History and Politics, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Postdoc in Crisis (or not?)

Achim Klüppelberg

, 2021-10-25

By Marta Musso and Lina Rahm, first published in our division’s Biennial Report 2019-2020 “Integrative Humanities”

During the summer of 2020, the journal Nature conducted a study on how the pandemic had affected postdocs’ careers as well as their well-being. Six out of ten stated that the pandemic had worsened their career opportunities, and more than half stated that they had experienced work-related anxiety and worry. The title of the article that presented the study was accordingly Postdocs in crisis.

One could say that a crisis is an event where the normal order of processes and institutions can no longer cope with new external conditions. The Coronavirus has revealed to us how we, as humans, are inevitably interlinked to a more-than-human world, a world which, in many ways, is also incalculable and outside the comfort zone of established knowledge (see the first-hand experience of dealing with the Coronavirus by Division Professor Marco Armiero, at this link). Further, it seems like the Covid crisis has been more conspicuously framed as a crisis of death, mourning and suffering, than, for example the so-called migrant crisis in 2019, where institutional problems were more highlighted (instead of the death, mourning and suffering connected to that). How societal phenomena are framed thus seems to depend on who is ‘touched by’ its consequences and how. As Marxist art critic J.J. Charlesworth tweeted: “There was never any lockdown. There were just middle-class people hiding while working-class people brought them things.”

So, even though we have been affected and concerned by the pandemic in many ways, we must also be ‘read’ with our privileges in mind. We could, to a large extent, avoid the worst rampages of the virus, and we were fortunate to work in a department that did its utmost to accommodate the new conditions of the distance mode. By creating a convivial and participatory atmosphere – through virtual APT meetings, higher seminars, helpful “shut-up-and-write” workshops, computer-mediated “semla celebration fika” (and physical stroll-meetings with social distancing) – we have been spurred to continue to take part of the research environment in very concrete ways.

If one important element for researchers has emerged from this pandemic, and especially for researchers using historical documents (NB: it’s not only historians!!), it is the importance of accessing archives in the digital sphere. Digitisation processes have been discussed and prepared for by archivists and institutions for at least the past 20 years, since the World Wide Web started to spread. Most archives, at least from rich countries, have opened a web presence of some sort; many are proceeding fast towards the complete digitisation of their collections, in order to allow researchers to access their documents 24/7, anywhere in the world. Others have at least a web presence where it is possible to search their catalogues through search engines, making archival research as fast and immediate as ever, usually from national-level portals, or hosted by the national archives of their country. International-level portals aggregating archival institutions from many different countries have also started to emerge (think of Europeana, Archives Portal Europe, or Internet Archive), institutions with very ambitious goals of becoming parallel entities to Google, where it is possible to search for all pre-digital cultural production as well. Before the pandemic, these projects never gathered too much attention. Except for archivists actively campaigning for digital access, digital archives were still a niche subject. Some professionals even boycotted them out of fear of making the physical institutions obsolete; researchers still traditionally work by organising their research around the trip to the archive; only a handful of institutions allow requests of digitisation on demand – something that now, with the pandemics, professional archive-goers have discovered the hard way. With institutions closed, billions of documents and related researches are on hold; conversely, collections that are available online are flourishing, providing a much-needed lifeline to researchers who are sometimes working on tight deadlines, and whose jobs expire when the funds expire, whether or not the research was carried out.

On a personal level, our post-doc research projects can still continue thanks to something that now feels like fantastic planning skills, but that really was just a stroke of luck. During previous archive trips, both of us photographed and digitised (“for personal use”) an amazing quantity of documents, which was too much for a single research task, but which are now being used for our current studies. The decision of taking thousands of photographs during the archive trips was not due to the idea that there might one day be a pandemic: indeed, before Coronavirus, our idea of a pandemic resembled a thrilling zombie apocalypse; never had the idea of “staying at home” and “social distancing” crossed our minds. The rationale behind it was to make the best use of the money and time spent on trips to very distant institutions, and because of the desire to check every single piece of a folder, while allowing for time, later on, to view and review as many papers available in the archive as possible.

Now that we cannot go to the physical archives, our own digital memories of the archives became the new archives that we could inhabit. Hopefully, the pandemic has helped to raise awareness of the importance of digitisation as a fundamental aspect of accessing our heritage, and something complementary, not in opposition, to archives and museum institutions.

Our Image of the Savannah Reveals who we are

Sofia Jonsson

, 2021-10-18

In the think piece, “Our image of the savannah reveals who we are” (Vår bild av savannen avslöjar vilka vi är), doctoral student Erik Isberg reflects on how our image of the early people on the savannah has change over the centuries and how it is characterized by its time. The text originally was published in Swedish for Sverigesradio.se. Below is a translated, shorted version.

Full text with references: Vår bild av savannen avslöjar vilka vi är

Our image of the savannah reveals who we are

Already 60 years before Christ, the Roman poet Lucretius speculated whether the first humans were of stronger stuff than the spoiled civilized equivalent, and in the 18th century, the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau expressed a similar idea, contrasting an idealized image of a harmonious state of nature against a corrupt contemporary. However, after World War II, theories about the origin of humankind gained new weight: they were to be substantiated scientifically rather than philosophically.

In the book “Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America”, the historian of ideas Erika Lorraine Milam writes a kind of savannah’s cultural history from the end of World War II.

The popular science stories of the 1950s about the origins of humanity emphasized cooperation, everyone’s common roots and the ability to communicate as an essential human trait. They were often cheered on – intellectually and financially – by Huxley’s Unesco. However, as the dream of a harmonious world began to fall and the balance of the cold war terror took over, the mood on the savannah also changed.

60’s pay attention to man’s inherent aggressiveness. A new generation of popular science writers highlighted characteristics such as violence and dominance as defining for the first humans. This inherent aggression had dictated the conditions of existence on the savannah, where those who wanted to survive had to establish a violent capital.

This savannah did not become particularly long-lived. Milam places the end of the idea of The Killer Ape, the dominant male as ruler of the savannah, to the 1980s. Who stepped in and took his place? No one, she answers. “When violence and prejudice became personal,” Milam writes, “biological theories of aggression and human nature became inadequate.” Collective explanatory models lost status and when the Cold War regime began to loosen up, the terrorist balance of our ancestors disappeared. Time had run out from the savannah, free individuals who left the stone axes in the grass and did not want to feel any common prehistory replaced The Killer Ape.

Nevertheless, the cultural history of the savannah does not end here after all. We find it everywhere at the bookstores’ top lists, and in TV productions and radio shows, it is an obvious foundation. Rather than disappearing, the savannah just seems to have changed shape. The prehistory that appears in the health literature appears as a continuation of the ideas that Milam describes in her book, but where the individual is more interesting than the common. Today we do not refer to our ancestors in matters of violence and prejudice, instead they are used to answer questions about how to live a better life. In this way, the savannah retains its moral implications, but not for society at large, but for the individual. Huxley’s vision of society has been replaced by self-optimization.

Swedish epidemiologist Anders Wallensten, author of the book The health mystery (Hälsogåtan: evolution, forskning och 48 konkreta råd, Bonnier Fakta, 2020), presents a savannah where the community is larger and the group’s cohesion is crucial for its continued survival. However, the goal of the community is not, as was the case in the utopian descriptions of the 1950s, a new society, but how individuals, through the support of the community, are to create a good life. Cooperation and community do not appear as goals in themselves, but as means for the individual to realize himself. In addition, the individual’s responsibility seems almost absolute.

Since Julian Huxley stood on the steps in Paris, the inhabitants of the savannah have repeatedly changed shape, and the popular science writers of the future will probably let the savannah be populated by additional new inhabitants, where the props remain but the ensemble is replaced. Perhaps the self-optimizing savannah people will have to make sacrifices for each other when pandemics and climate change hit their contemporary counterparts. Or something completely different happens. Perhaps the most interesting thing is not what answers the savannah can give us, but what questions we think it can answer.

Text: Erik Isberg, doctoral student in the project SPHERE

Baltic Sea Water Talks on Utö

Achim Klüppelberg

, 2021-10-04

Utö, one of the major islands of the Stockholm archipelago, recently hosted the Baltic Sea Water Talks. David Nilsson, Associate Professor at our division and Director of the WaterCentre@KTH, has been a key participant of this conference. Many researchers, entrepreneurs, and environmentalists have joined to discuss how the island tackles the upcoming challenges of a changing Baltic Sea and ecosystem.

David has written the following report, which was first published on the WaterBlog@KTH on 29 September 2021.

~*~

On pikes and potatoes

On the island Utö in Stockholm’s southern archipelago they grow pikes and potatoes next to each other. You don’t believe me? Go see for yourself!

In the beginning of September I returned to this wonderful spot, along with some 50 academics, entrepreneurs, investors and environmentalists. The occasion that brought us here was the first Baltic Sea Water Talks; a meeting of diverse professionals in search of practical solutions for challenges in the Baltic Sea.

KTH researchers visiting Utö’s famous windmill

People on the island of Utö have always depended on what nature gives, in one way or the other. While this might be said for all of humanity, it is never more obvious than on an island at sea. Already from the 12th century, it was the iron ore on the island that brought prosperity. After the mining was abandoned in the 19th century, all the trees were cut down to supply timber to the growing city of Stockholm. But fish was plenty and by the early 1900s, there were some 70 fishing boats stationed on Utö. Now there is only one part-time fisherman left. Instead, the island has become a popular tourism destination thanks to its unique nature, its heritage and birdlife. Yet again, nature provides the basis for local livelihood. But how do we make life in the archipelago sustainable after centuries of predatory resource extraction?

This is where the pikes and the potatoes come in. Initiativ Utö, a local NGO and also the host of the WaterTalks, has started to build “pike factories”. In these constructed wetlands and estuaries they aim to both restore the fishing stock and reduce nutrient loads. Nutrients in the run-off and sediments are collected through mechanical and biological methods and the estuaries are breeding places for pike. The pikes restore some balance in the local marine ecosystems and attracts sports fishers. The recovered nutrient is used in local small-scale farming, and seems to be particularly good for potatoes.

Currently, two research groups from KTH are actively doing research on the pike factory wetlands. A team led by Guna Rajarao Kuttuva looks into monitoring techniques and optimisation of the wetland. Another team led by Zeynep Cetecioglu Gurol is investigating the potential of phosporous “mining” from the estuary sediments, where valuable phosphorous could be extracted as a commercial product. Research and innovation like theirs moves us towards “closing the loop” for food production on a whole new scale. Could the polluted seas become a source for valuable and scarce nutrients? Can we move towards a balance with nature and stop exhausting nature’s resources one after the other?

Thomas Hjelm of Initiativ Utö talking to Zeynep Cetecioglu Gurol in the wetlands

And most importantly, what to do with the potatoes? For my part, I prefer the Swedish traditional dish “raggmunk”, a type of potato pancake. I can tell you that the Utö potatoes grown on sludge from the pike factory, are particularly well suited for raggmunk. Bon appétit!

Utö-Raggmunkar

10 Utö potatoes

3 eggs

2 dl flour

4 dl milk

1 teaspoon salt

Grate potatoes coarsely

Mix egg, flour, salt and milk and add grated potatoes

Form small “beefs” into saucepan and fry on medium-high, rich with butter

Serve with lingonberries

Le chef at work – grating away in the kitchen

Technical Development and Education

Achim Klüppelberg

, 2021-09-13

As digitisation and computers in general are advancing rapidly, many engineers and scientists work on the possibilities and challenges developing artificial intelligence might pose. AI as a topic is also being researched by a handful of members of our division.

As such, researcher Lina Rahm has published a new article with the title “Education, automation and AI: a genealogy of alternative future” in the journal Learning, Media and Technology. She discusses the co-development of education technologies with both new trends in digital advancements and views on these issues from the past. The way we do education as humanities scholars has already changed profoundly during the ongoing pandemic. Furthermore, change is an ongoing thing and thus Lina’s research is necessary more than ever.

If you are interested in the article you can find it here.

Abstract:

The relationship between technical development and education is a reciprocal one, where education always stands in relation to those skills, competencies, and techniques that are anticipated as necessary in a technological future. At the same time, skills and competencies are also necessary to drive innovation and technical development for the progressive creation of desirable futures. Jumping back to the 1950s, this article illustrates how automation and AI have been anticipated as both problems and solutions in society, and how education has been used to solve these problems or realize these solutions. That is, computerization debates have concentrated on both the growing opportunities and the increasing risks, but almost always also on the need for corresponding education. The article uses a genealogical approach to show how, from the 1950s and up until today, education has been mobilized as an important tool for governance in computer policies.

Sabine Höhler in the Cultural Histories Series

Sofia Jonsson

, 2021-09-07

Sabine Höhler recently contributed with the chapter “Creating the Blue Planet from Modern Oceanography” in the sixth volume of the The Cultural Histories of the Sea in the Global Age (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021).

Throughout history, how has the sea served as a site for cross-cultural exchange, trade and migration? As historians, how do the fields of naval history, maritime history and oceanic history intersect?
About the series, from Bloomsbury

Sabine’s chapter is available open access here: Creating the Blue Planet from Modern Oceanography

The full series can be purchased through the Bloomsbury link under the above qoute.

Information

Hoehler, S. (2021)
Creating the Blue Planet from Modern Oceanography: Creating the Blue Planet from
Modern Oceanography
In: Franziska Torma (ed.), A Cultural History of the Sea in the Global Age (pp. 21-44).
London: Bloomsbury Academic
The Cultural Histories Series

Projects

Formas SDGs: The Mediated Planet: Claiming Data for Environmental H2020-ERC-2017-ADG: SPHERE Study of the Planetary Human-Environment Relationship: The Rise of Global Environmental Governance

Funder

Swedish Research Council Formas, 2020-00512
EU, European Research Council, 787516

A new PhD at the division

Achim Klüppelberg

, 2021-08-30

Life moves on, a new term has started and we as a division are very glad to welcome our new PhD-student Erik Ljungberg, who works in the History of Media and Environment with a focus on AI and autonomous systems. We have asked him a few questions to introduce himself and you can read his answers below.

Profile picture of Erik Ljungberg

Given that you had to switch countries for your new position, how was your transition to KTH?

I have to say that KTH has made the transition very easy. With the opportunity to get an apartment within a short space of time through KTH Relocation, making the jump from Oslo to Stockholm has been pretty effortless. Although shifting COVID restrictions have made the process a little unpredictable at times.

Could you please tell us a bit about yourself and the topics you are working on, especially within your PhD?

I am a historian of knowledge and started at KTH as a PhD student in August. I am more or less associated with the Mediated Planet project, which looks at how data gathering practices, data access and data ownership shape environmental perception and politics. Though my project is also a bit freer to go in different, but related directions. I have backgrounds in both history of knowledge, which was the discipline I wrote my M.A. thesis in at the University of Oslo, and cultural anthropology, which I did a second B.A. in while doing my masters. Specifically my M.A. thesis looked at the advent of phenology, or in other words the measurement of rhythms of nature, in British natural science in the 18th-century. Phenology is a fascinating endeavor to study from a history of knowledge perspective because the possibility of mapping seasonal variations among plants and animals only really came into being once there was a knowledge infrastructure capable of gathering and processing big amounts of data. Basically you had to make daily observations over several years. Particular ways of handling paper were really at the center of this process. But you also needed ways to structure the recorded data in purely visual terms in order to streamline the process of recording and reading data. So one of the things I highlighted in my research was the importance of the table as the condition of possibility for this kind of knowledge production, stressing the fact that knowledge is simultaneously material and cognitive.

My PhD project will maintain this media theoretical focus on how knowledge emerges through being circulated through socio-material infrastructures, but focuses instead on the role of AI and autonomous systems in environmental understanding. It is exceedingly likely that AI and autonomous systems will fundamentally change the way that human society monitors, models, and manages the Earth’s natural systems. What is interesting to me is placing this development within a longer history of shifting Earth-human relationships wherein mediation plays a crucial role. As the environment becomes increasingly dataified, a central question also revolves around usage and access to data. This becomes especially salient once the issue of monetization comes into the picture. Who should capitalize on the use of data that is public, free, and ubiquitous? Questions such as these are important to address as big tech companies currently stand a fair chance of developing a hegemony of expertise when it comes to these issues.

What is coming up right now? What do you aim for in the near future in terms of research, (side-)projects, or public outreach?

Right now I am making an outline of my project, and also simply trying to get an overview of the field, or several fields actually, that I will be working in. Otherwise, I have a couple of things on the agenda. I am working on a paper for the Nordical Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and I had a paper accepted for one of the panels at the upcoming 4S conference. Also, I hope to have a blog up and running in the next months which can serve as a kind of outlet for some of the developments that are unfolding so rapidly within the field of AI and the environment.

Starting during the pandemic is challenging, although we all hope that regular work routines can be resumed during this term. What kind of impact has Covid-19 had on your work?

Actually I got a scholarship to go to London and spend time in the archives, but that proved unfeasable during the pandemic. Certainly my M.A. thesis suffered from this. On the other hand, since a lot of workshops and conferences have gone digital, it has been possible for me to take part in discussions that I never would have been able to if I had to fly. Hopefully the landscape of post-COVID academia will include a lot less flying, while still acknowledging our need to interact face-to-face.

*

Thank you, and “Välkommen!” Erik, it is good to have you with us!

PhD-Defence on Friday

Achim Klüppelberg

, 2021-08-16

On this Friday, 20 August 2021, at 4pm Stockholm Time PhD-Candidate Dmitry V. Arzyutov will defend his dissertation with the title “Reassembling the Environmental Archives of the Cold War”. Dima’s opponent is Assistant Professor Bathsheba Demuth from Brown University in Providence, USA (State of Rhode Island). We are looking forward together with his supervisors Peder Roberts (Stavanger), Per Högselius (KTH) and Julia Lajus (St. Petersburg) to this major event in our division’s PhD-education.

If you want to join check out the official announcement including the Zoom-link here.

Abstract

To what extent the environmental history of the Arctic can move beyond the divide between Indigenous peoples and newcomers or vernacular and academic ways of knowing? The present dissertation answers this question by developing the notion of an environmental archive. Such an archive does not have particular reference to a given place but rather it refers to the complex network that marks the relations between paper documents and human and non-human agencies as they are able to work together and stabilise the conceptualisation of a variety of environmental objects. The author thus argues that the environment does not only contain information about the past but just like any paper (or audio and video) archive is able to produce it through the relational nature of human-environment interactions. Through the analysis of five case studies from the Russian North, the reader is invited to go through various forms of environmental archives which in turn embrace histories of a number of disciplines such as palaeontology, biology, anthropology, and medicine. Every case or a “layer” is presented here as a contact zone where Indigenous and academic forms of knowledge are not opposed to each other but, on the contrary, are able to interact and consequently affect the global discussions about the Russian Arctic. This transnational context is pivotal for all the cases discussed in the dissertation. Moreover, by putting the Cold War with its tensions between two superpowers at the chronological center of the present work, the author aims to reveal the multidimensionality of in situ interactions with, for instance, the paleontological remains or the traces of all-terrain vehicles and their involvement into broader science transnational cooperations and competitions. As a result, the heterogeneous archives allow us to reconsider the environmental history of the Russian North and the wider Arctic and open a new avenue for future research transcending the geopolitical and epistemic borders of knowledge production.

Abstract på svenska

I vilken grad kan en miljhöhistorisk analys av Arktis undvika klyftan mellan ursprungsfolk och nykomlingar, samt mellan folkliga och akademiska form för vetenskap? Avhandlingen svarar på denna fråga genom att utveckla begreppet ”miljöarkiv.” Ett sådant arkiv hänvisar inte till en särskild plats, men heller till et komplex nätverk som samlar ihop förhållande mellan dokument i papper och båda mänskliga och icke-mänskliga aktörskap. Tillsammans stabiliserar och konceptualiserer de ett antal miljöobjekten. Författaren argumenterar därför att miljö omfattar inte bara information om förtiden men liksom andra form för arkiv (antingen papper-baserat eller elektronisk) kan reproducera förtiden genom att belysa interaktioner mellan människor och natur. Genom fem case studier från det nordliga Ryssland bjudas läsaren på en tur av fem olika miljöarkiv som omfattar olika disciplinära traditioner, t. ex. paleontologi, biolog, antropologi, och medicin. Varje case eller ”lager” presenteras här som kontaktzon var ursprungliga och akademiska form för vetenskap inte nödvändigtvis står i opposition, men tvärtom påverkar varandra, och därmed får inflytelse över diskussioner om det ryska Arktis även på global nivå. Denna transnationella kontext är avgörande för alla cases i avhandlingen. Genom att sätta det kalla kriget i analysens centrum (kronologisk sett), med fokus på spänningarna mellan stormakterna, hoppas författaren att belysa de flerdimensionella interaktionerna mellan t. ex. paleontologiska fynd och spår från bandfordon och hur dessa interaktioner var kopplad till bredare frågor kring multinationella samarbete och konkurrens. En så heterogen uppfattning av arkivet öppnar för nye perspektiv på miljöhistorien av båda det ryska Arktis och Arktis set i sin helhet, samt öppna för nya forskningsfrågor som överskrider nuvarande geopolitiske och epistemologiska gränser innanför kunskapsproduktion.

Good luck, Dima!

STREAMS coming up this week!

Achim Klüppelberg

, 2021-08-02

This week the Environmental Humanities Laboratory at the division is hosting the long-awaited STREAMS-Conference (STREAMS-Transformative Environmental Humanities) digitally in Stockholm.

We are delighted that despite all the problems the organising committee had encountered during the Covid-19-pandemic the conference can finally take place – albeit only in a virtual format. The team has put together a very differentiated programme, encompassing a vast array of presentations, films, artwork, keynotes, roundtables and networking events. Scholars of Environmental Humanities, Energy History, Climate Change and the Anthropocene will meet artists, activists (e.g. from Extinction Rebellion Sweden) and editors on the new Streams EventsAIR Virtual Platform to facilitate a great networking experience despite the challenges of the new home-office-normality. The keynote-speakers are among others: Jürgen Renn, Adeline Johns-Putra, Michelle Bastian, Julie Sze, James Ogude and Dipesh Chakrabarty.

Higher Seminars at the Division

Sofia Jonsson

, 2021-07-12

While many people slow down and prepare for vacation, the higher seminar coordinator is in heavy planning for the fall. The Higher Seminar is the colloquium series of the Division where invited guests as well as our own researchers presents seminar on themes from our core areas of history.

The fall of 2021 offers a mix of doctoral defenses, mid-seminars and the annual Archipelago Lectures. Read more in the preleminary program, and feel warmly welcome to attend. This coming semester we hope to be able to have some on-site seminars, but we start on zoom. Do you want som background on the seminar series? See cooridnator Katarina Larsen’s text from our report below.

Higher Seminars at the Division

Text by Katarina Larsen, from the Biennial Report, 2019-2020

The higher seminar series at the division reflects the broad range of exciting topics of research. From “A sea change in Environmental humanities” to studies of history of indigenous communities in the Arctic context, nuclear technology, educational imaginaries, science policy studies, health development projects and innovation in Mozambique, and urban water management. These were just a few of the topics that we had the chance to and discuss during 2019 and 2020. Usually, we have between eight to ten seminars per semester. Adding up the numbers for the past two years, we had about 34 presentations, in addition to a handful of doctoral dissertations and the annual Archipelago lectures.

The higher seminar has a longstanding history at the Division. A text is circulated about a week before the seminar, the author presents for 45 minutes and the next 45 minutes are devoted to discussion. The regular schedule is Mondays 13.15–14.45. The seminar is an institution allowing for scholars at the division to present their ongoing work and also for us all to hear invited speakers. Among presentations we also follow the process that graduate students go through in the program, from presenting the from doctoral plan (the “PhD PM”), through mid-seminar (at 50%) and the final seminar (80 to 90%). Both the mid-seminars and final seminar have invited discussants. Moreover, these presentations give a chance for doctoral students in early stages of their PhD-project to “open a window” to see how the final stages of the doctoral projects take shape and allowing for cross-cohort learning for doctoral students.The seminar series is an open to anyone. The schedule is published online and we frequently have quests in the audience. As organizer of the higher seminars during 2019–2020, I often get comments like “it seems like your colleagues really do show up at your seminars” and “you have some really interesting topics so I would like to hear more about the upcoming seminars”.

During spring 2020, the pandemic turned the higher seminars into an online event, which provided both limitations and opportunities. More scholars from universities abroad, and in Sweden, have found their way to our higher seminar series. This is reinforcing the idea that the series should be a place to meet and exchange ideas, present arguments, discuss virtues and limitations of different research methods, and constitute a space for scholars to learn across scientific disciplines and thematic areas. So, we hope to see you, too at the next higher seminar, starting Monday 13.15, Stockholm time!

Warmly,
Katarina Larsen,
Coordinator of the Higher seminar series, 2019–2020
Div. History of Science, Technology and Environment

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Postdoc in Crisis (or not?)

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Our Image of the Savannah Reveals who we are

Our image of the savannah reveals who we are

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Baltic Sea Water Talks on Utö

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Technical Development and Education

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Sabine Höhler in the Cultural Histories Series

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A new PhD at the division

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PhD-Defence on Friday

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STREAMS coming up this week!

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Higher Seminars at the Division

Higher Seminars at the Division

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