Erik Isberg receives Johan Nordströms and Sten Lindroths prize for his dissertation

The “Johan Nordström and Sten Lindroth Prize for Outstanding Scientific Work” is awarded to dissertations in the field of history of ideas and scholarship. The prize of SEK 20,000 is awarded every two years by the Department of History of Ideas at Uppsala University. The decision on the laureate is made by a prize committee consisting of representatives from various universities. For the year 2024, which thus refers to dissertations submitted during the calendar years 2022 and 2023, the prize committee has decided to reward Erik Isberg's dissertation Planetary Timemaking: Paleoclimatology and the Temporalities of Environmental Knowledge, 1945–1990. The award committee's motivation is as follows:

"Erik Isberg's dissertation Planetary Timemaking: Paleoclimatology and the Temporalities of Environmental Knowledge, 1945–1990 on the history of paleoclimatology and the time scales of climate change positions itself expertly within a current field of research and makes meritorious use of its analytical inputs. The empirical studies begin on a small scale, in individual individuals and their networks, and then, by following archives consisting of ice cores and drill cores from the seabed in the 1940s until they were incorporated into Earth system science in the 1980s, develop into an impressive global history of science. Isberg's historicization of planetary time provides highly topical historical theoretical discussions with an empirical basis that is often lacking. Here, theoretical reflection is combined with concrete analyses of the scientific practices that have materialized the new temporal landscape in which the humanities today operate. The dissertation is an important and well-written contribution to both Swedish and international history of ideas and the understanding of the Anthropocene as a social and political problem.”

The award ceremony with the presentation of diplomas will take place in the Department of History of Ideas premises at the beginning of the spring semester 2026

You can read Erik Isberg's dissertation here.