Guests at the Division 2024

Gabriella is a PhD candidate in "Global History of Empires" at the University of Turin (Italy) and a teaching fellow at the University of Naples Federico II. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Theoretical Philosophy and her Master’s degree in Social History at University of Naples Federico II, preparing her Master’s thesis at Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne University. Subsequently, she got a research grant on the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster in Italy at the Department of Social Sciences of University of Naples Federico II. She was awarded two research grants from the Comité d’histoire de l’énergie et de l’électricité. Her current PhD project is "The Sun in the factory. History of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) since the end of the Cold war". Her broad research interests lie in the History of technosciences, energy and environment. She is part of the editorial board of the series “Mondo Sud” (ed. Le Penseur) and web Editor of the SISAM (Società italiana di Storia Ambientale) website.

Period: October to December

Iván González Iglesias is a visiting Sociology student with a Bachelor degree at the Complutense University of Madrid. He is committed to contribute for the planetary diverse affective transitions towards more adequate living patterns with the web of Life in an (unequally) ruined world. Thus, apart from investing time in learning from non-Western alternative possible worlds and their systemic critiques, he is trying to appreciate closer examples by working with some rural communities in Spain who suffered from great forest fires between 2021 and 2023, researching in participatory and intervening formats to learn from their complex affective regimes towards the territory and “translating” some valuable teachings through the writing of short tales.

At the Division he is engaged with designing different collective initiatives related with the testing of the “arts of scholaring” in a damaged planet. For that purpose, he is contributing to design a reading discussion circle, a seminar and a workshop that brings the Division out of its “knowledge fortress” inviting speakers who come from different backgrounds (academic and more-than-academic) and whose aim is to build up stories of the “Academy of the Anthropocene”. 

Iván is looking forward to publishing an article reviewing his work at the Division and to digging in the existing Master programs around the Anthropocene. Moreover, he will be contributing to further collective actions related to the fight for Life in the communities he is being part of during his stay, like the swing dancers community in Stockholm.

Period: September to December

Farzana Bashiri is a PhD candidate within the Research Policy group at Lund University. She was recruited as part of a platform called Making Universities Matter.

Farzana´s background is in environmental studies and sustainability science as well as engineering. This makes her a multi/inter-disciplinary researcher. Overall, her research is motivated with the theme of activism and social movements. She has previously studied the case of a grassroots initiative in Iran to understand the dynamics of bottom-up change and survival, especially under politically-stringent conditions.

Farzana´s PhD is focused on the theme of scholar-activism from a sociology of science perspective. She is interested in how scholar-activism is constructed, perceived, and enacted in academic contexts and beyond. The ways scholars handle tensions and navigate dualities and boundaries of science and activism is also of her interest. As of her empirical cases, she has focused on Sweden and South Africa to shed light on the local particularities of a universal phenomenon.

Period: September

Jan Nicolay is a Ph. D. candidate at the Interdisciplinary Center for Science and Technology Studies at the University of Wuppertal in Germany. He is part of the interdisciplinary Research Training Group “Transformations of Science and Technology since 1800”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). His project is located in the history of science and technology. Under the title “Research Vessels ‘Meteor’ I-III - Continuity and Change in German Oceanography”, it takes a critical look at the last 100 years of German ocean science. It questions popular narratives of traditions and transformations. By analysing interactions between scientific institutions, research content, technology and scientific practices, it aims to provide new insights into the production of knowledge about the ocean. One focus lies on the German perspective on oceanic space. The project askes how specific cultural, political and economic needs shaped the perception of this space and how these perceptions shaped the scientific work, to illustrate the origins of our current understanding of the marine environment.

During his stay at KTH, Jan will discuss his project with experts from the division to strengthen the environmental history aspects of his projects. He hopes that his stay will help him to understand how to write history in the Anthropocene.

He is also involved in the course "Swedish Society, Culture and Industry in Historical Perspective" as a seminar leader.

Period: August to October

Oscar Hartman Davies is a Social Sciences Engagement Fellow at the School of Geography and the Environment and the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery at the University of Oxford. He is an environmental geographer whose work centres around the emerging interdisciplinary field of ‘digital ecologies’, and his recently defended PhD thesis considers the mobilisation of seabirds as sentinels of environmental change from the 1950s to the present, and seabirds’ current entanglement with digital transformations in ocean governance. His current fellowship seeks to integrate social scientific insights on effective participatory approaches to nature’s recovery into the work of Youngwilders – a youth-led nature recovery organisation in the UK - and the European Young Rewilders network.

Oscar is also involved in ongoing collaborative research considering the emergence of new forms of ‘microbial citizenship’ in the context of public engagements with freshwater sewage pollution in England, as well as the emergence and practices of connectivity as an organising principle for landscape-scale conservation projects. While at the KTH Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, Oscar will be working on publishing some of the work from his thesis and other recent research, as well as working with colleagues from the Anthropocene Laboratory at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences towards a collaborative workshop in late 2024.

Period: March to June

Rithma Kreie Engelbreth Larsen is a PhD candidate at the Department of Philosophy and History of Ideas at Aarhus University, Denmark. Rithma’s doctoral research historicizes the idea of “Indigenous knowledge forms” as it features within institutions like IPCC (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and IPBES (The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). As Indigenous knowledge holders have increasingly been invited to contribute to questions of climate mitigation and natural management since the 1980s, it has become more urgent to examine the extent and nature of this epistemological pluralization within institutions of climate and biodiversity science. Rithma focuses in her research on the challenges that appear on a discursive and conceptual level, as she examines the inclusion through an analytical lens of epistemic injustice. As such, her research is situated across the disciplines of intellectual history, STS, the history of science, nature, and the environment, and the philosophy of science.

Rithma’s research interests include ecofeminism and posthumanism, decolonial philosophies, and the history of knowledge. During her stay at KTH Division of History of Science, Technology, and Environment, she will be working on an article on epistemic pluralism within IPBES, and another article that historicizes the recurring debates on what is often summarized as the Ecological Indian trope. Rithma will be affiliated with the newly established Centre for Anthropocene History as well the Environmental Humanities Laboratory during her stay.

Period: February to July

Madeleine is a Gates Scholar and PhD candidate at the university of Cambridge studying how religious people in different parts of the world think about climate change. In particular, she is studying the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as “Mormon”), and has recently completed her fieldwork in Southern Utah, Samoa, and London.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a highly centralized religion which prioritizes de-localizing spaces and unifying practice across the globe. However, on the question of climate change, the church is nearly silent, leaving believers to develop their own opinions. What little data is available about climate change beliefs among American church members show that they are more likely to dismiss the claims of anthropogenic climate change than their otherwise identical demographic counterparts. This suggests that something about religious belief drives skepticism. However, anecdotal evidence (rigorous research here is scant to non-existent) indicates that, unlike their American co-religionists, international church members are not so likely to question climate science. This indicates that while the religion often acts as a centripetal force, driving adherents toward unified belief and practice, the absence of climate guidance from leadership gives weight to the centrifugal forces of place and results in divergent climate beliefs.

Madeleine's research seeks to understand exactly how these forces interact to produce climate beliefs among church members. In doing so, it will provide answers to questions about how religion and geography influence each other in forming climate action beliefs.

Period: January to June