We are happy to share the news that Professor Sverker Sörlin was nominated by Sveriges Radio P1 to be one of the hosts for the aclaimed radio show Sommar. The show has been running during the summer weeks since the sixties. Every year a number of profiles of various backgrounds (research, arts, acting, politics etc) are choosen to host the show for a one hour session. The hosts choose the topic themselves and the music that goes with it.
The names are announced at the end of May each years, and the days before are always full of Swedes speculating in the lunch room about who will be on the list the upcoming sumer. It is an honorable nomination, and we are all very proud and happy that Sverker is one of the hosts this year.
“-My summer speaks about the love towards life and about such things that help us to live, for example empathy, justice and education. Therefore it will be about the vision of the fossil-free wellfare state Sweden. This is the new Green Norrland’s test case.”
Sverker’s show will air on 7 July, but is accessable at the Swedish Radio webpage after. The show is always in Swedish.
Please check out the broadcast via Radio Sweden’s Website. The producer of the session is Niklas Zachrisson.
Abstract (from Radio Sweden):
Sverker Sörlin är prisbelönt författare och professor i miljöhistoria vid Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan.
Under lång tid har Sverker Sörlin också varit del av den svenska kulturdebatten som skribent i bland annat Dagens Nyheter. Han har skrivit en rad böcker, främst inom området idéhistoria, men också självbiografiskt om längdskidåkning, sjukdom och bildning.
I sin avhandling ”Framtidslandet” från 1988 beskrev han den första industriella revolutionen i Norrland i slutet av 1800-talet. En liknande utveckling sker idag – och framtidshoppet kring norra Sveriges nya stora industrier växer återigen.
This joint seminar features two perspectives on how power relations have become embedded in computer technologies. Beginning with the early history of computers, Janet Abbate examines how computers were metaphorically described as “giant brains.”
Brain imagery encouraged the public to believe that computers had remarkable powers, while simultaneously obscuring the skilled labor of human programmers (often women) who did much of the actual work. This metaphor helped to devalue human labor and also fed the illusion that autonomous machines, rather than the people who controlled them, were responsible for the results produced by computers.
Abbate argues that in recent times the word “algorithm” has taken on the metaphorical role of the “giant brain” and performs similar ideological work, making human labor invisible while raising questions of accountability.
Fernanda R. Rosa explores power relations embedded in Internet infrastructure, revealing how Internet routers reflect and perpetuate global inequalities. She introduces an analytical technique called “code ethnography,” a method for examining code as a socio-technical actor, considering its social, political, and economic dynamics in the context of digital infrastructures.
Rosa focuses on the code for the Border Gateway Protocol and examines how this code is implemented at the internet exchange points (IXPs) that interconnect networks and allow the Internet to operate as a global infrastructure. Her comparison of the IXPs located in Frankfurt and São Paulo reveals inequalities between the global North and the global South and a concentration of power at the level of interconnection infrastructure hitherto unknown in the context of the political economy of the internet.
Both talks emphasize that an algorithm or an Internet router can only be understood in context: not only as part of a larger technological system, but also as an active element in social, economic and political power relations.
Time: Fri 2022-06-17 14.15 – 16.00 (Swedish Time)
Location: Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, Seminarroom Teknikringen 74 D, 5th floor
Language: English
Lecturer: Janet Abbate, Prof. & Fernanda R. Rosa, Ass. Prof., Science, Technology & Society at Virginia Tech
Dr. Janet Abbate is Professor and Dr. Fernanda R. Rosa is Assistant Professor, both at Science, Technology and Society at Virginia Tech.
The 2022 NordAI spring seminars on AI and environment is curated by Adam Wickberg and Tirza Meyer from the Mediated Planet Research Group at KTH. The series feature contributions from leading scholars working with AI at the interface between the human and non-human world, exploring the question of what constitutes the environment through the lens of artificial intelligence. The seminars are held online, and are open to everyone.
Smart forests
May 5th, 14.0o, Jennifer Gabrys, Chair in Media, Culture, and Environment in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge.
Discussant Sabine Höhler, Principal Investigator of the Mediated Planet project, Division of History of Science, technology and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
About
Jennifer Gabrys will talk about the Smart Forests project, that investigates the social-political impacts of digital technologies that monitor and govern forest environments. Gabrys leads the Planetary Praxis research group, and is Principal Investigator on the ERC-funded project, Smart Forests: Transforming Environments into Social-Political Technologies. She also leads the Citizen Sense and AirKit projects, which investigates the use of environmental sensors for new modes of citizen involvement in environmental issues. Both of these projects have received funding from the European Research Council.
The Nordic Institute of Latin American Studies at Stockholm University and the Rizoma platform are inviting everyone to an Open Lecture. There, our division’s postdoctoral researcher Nuno Da Silva Marques, affiliated with the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, is going to talk about and discuss the transcultural role of ecopoetry. Ecopoetry is a genre for peace, sustainability and ecology with deep roots in Latin American culture. Apart from Nuno, Swedish poet Jonas Gren and Argentinian poet Gisela Heffes join the debate.
The lecture takes place on 28 April 2022 from 6 to 8pm (Stockholm time). Participation is possible both on-site at the Library of the Nordic Institute of Latin American Studies at Stockholm University and online through the registration form available here.
Latin America has a robust tradition of ecopoetry featuring the work of world-renown poets as Nicanor Parra, Homero Aridjis, Esthela Calderón, among many others. Since the emergence in the 60s, this poetry has renovated the lyrical expression to mourn the vanishing of ecosystems, to propose ways to connect to the environment beyond neoliberal ideologies, and to push for environmental legislation in the region, “to fight for an e-constitution” as the ecopoem by Parra goes. Ecopoetry constitutes a kind of environmental knowledge that registers the ecological crisis contributing embodied and situated ways to relate to the planet. As a literary practice, ecopoetry revisits cultural imaginaries of nature to foster an ethics of care that traverses national and linguistic barriers. This open lecture will feature poetry readings in a transcultural and translingual perspective from Argentina-USA (Gisela Heffes), Sweden (Jonas Gren) and Portugal (Nuno Marques). The readings will be framed by discussions prompted by the moderator (Azucena Castro) to highlight ecopoetry as a kind of expression that connects environmental, cultural, biological, technological and political concerns. Attention will be paid to how ecopoetry assembles word and world, art and science, human and nonhuman to portray diverse Anthropocenes in ways attentive to situated and local experiences. At a time of accelerated species extinction, social instability and climate change, this open lecture will consider what role can (eco)poetry play as a cultural phenomenon, an epistemology and a critical practice to reweave ourselves to others and the planet.
The Nuclearwaters project is hosting the third seminar in its Nuclearwaters Seminar Series this term. This time we have the pleasure of welcoming Sonali Huria, who is going to be speaking about the relationship of the Bishnoi community with water in nuclear India.
Ecological entanglements, nuclear ruptures, and the affective intimacies of Bishnoi resistance
For the Bishnoi, among the earliest eco-conservationist communities in the Indian subcontinent, encounters with the atom have been encounters of colossal ruptures. Their histories, geographies, religious intimacies, and more-than-human worlds have collided with India’s nuclear trajectories at two distinct sites – first, in the arid deserts of Pokharan, Rajasthan where India conducted its atomic tests, forcing the Bishnoi into the ranks of the Global Hibakusha (Jacobs 2022), and, more recently, in Fatehabad, Haryana where the Indian government is setting up a massive 2,800MWe nuclear plant comprising four ‘indigenous’ CANDU-type Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors of 700 MWe each.
While to the Bishnoi, water represents a vital element in the multispecies assemblage in which the human, nonhuman, and the divine all come together in an entangled relational ecology of reverence, kinship, nurturing, ethics, and reciprocity, the proposed nuclear plant, to be set up over the Fatehabad branch of the Bhakra Canal, the lifeline of this predominantly agricultural region, threatens to usurp and drain away its dense material embeddedness within the Bishnoi ecology.
This presentation will seek to tease out such multiple layers of material embeddedness of water within Bishnoi lifeworlds, in the contestation between the Indian state, besotted with the nuclear age, and the intimacies of ecological subjects committed to protecting their sacred material worlds, and, to bring these entangled flows from the nuclearized Bishnoi heartland to the Nuclear Waters seminar. (Visit the Nuclear Waters project page)
Reference
Jacobs, Robert A. (2022). Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha. Yale University Press
Dr Sonali Huria is the 2020-21 Fellow, Takagi Fund for Citizen Science, Japan and an associated scholar, Science, Technology and Gender Studies, FAU, Erlangen-Nürnberg. She has worked for over a decade in the field of human rights research, teaching, advocacy, and investigation at India’s National Human Rights Commission, and completed her PhD in 2020 from Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. Her doctoral research involved an exploration of the encounters of grassroots movements in India with the technopolitical trajectories of and imaginaries surrounding India’s nuclear modernity, and the brutalities unleashed by the postcolonial nuclear obsessions of the world’s largest democracy. She has written extensively on the political, social, environmental, and human rights concerns surrounding India’s nuclear sector for news portals, magazines, and newspapers in South Asia and beyond. She also co-edits DiaNuke.org, a popular resource space on nuclear disarmament and nuclear energy issues.
As a part of the activities in the project NATURE, we wanted to have an interaction with visitors that came to the exhibition “Symbiosis” during autumn 2021 where a section on water was developed in collaboration with the art institution Färgfabriken.
The exhibition hall is located in an old industrial building in area of Lövholmen, near Liljeholmen in the south of Stockholm. Researchers from KTH working with the water theme included Katarina Larsen, David Nilsson and Timos Karpouzoglou. As a part of the interactive approach, we asked visitors about their relation to water and also challenged them to imagine what messages that they could hear if water itself was given a voice or legal rights. Some of the reflections received from visitors to the exhibition were really thought provoking.
The water component of the Symbiosis exhibition was developed in collaboration with the art institution Färgfabriken and the Stockholm based artist Åsa Cederqvist. The artistic work and collaborative dialogues created ideas for how to communicate different types of water narratives, through texts, images and interactive activities during the exhibition. The art work developed by Åsa was entitled “The Essence” giving water a voice of itself. This was done through an art installation using augmented reality (AR) to create a visual 3D image of a drop of water floating above the floor in the factory of Färgfabriken when visitors looked through the lens of a digital screen.
Photo: ”The Essence – spirit of the water” by Åsa Cederqvist in exhibition Symbiosis at Färgfabriken during autumn 2021. Photo: Färgfabriken
The visitors could also hear the voice of this water spirit through headphones and speakers and were asked what they think the water spirit would tell them. Some of the answers from the visitors expressed a sense of guilt (that we have not taken care of nature like we should have) but also narratives revealing a strong connection with water and nature. Other reflections dealt with idea of control of nature, that there is a struggle between humans and nature and water as a precondition for life on earth.
“I have existed for millions of years and kept plants and animals alive and developed new life forms. I will always survive and find new life forms. Doesn’t humanity want to be a part of that also?
“Look at me angrily, maybe punch me”
“Get a grip!”
“Take good care of me, or else….”
“It’s OK, I love you anyway”
“I have been inside Björn Borg’s stomach”
“Show some respect for my spirit and do not take me for granted!”
Other responses expressed that it would be interesting to take part of the water’s life perspective, both historically and thoughts about the future and how we can we coexist in the best possible way.
We also invited policymakers, engineers and other local actors from the Stockholm area to a series of workshops to discuss their experiences from existing urban water infrastructures and views on future ways to manage systems and infrastructures in cities. The discussions took place in the exhibition hall hosting the exhibition “Symbiosis” curated by Färgfabriken.
During these workshops we wanted to have a dialogue with local politicians, policymakers as well as engineers who are managing existing critical infrastructures for water in Stockholm about their experiences and views on future ways to manage urban water infrastructures in cities. The dialogues also sparked discussions about what the term “infrastructure” actually means. Is it the pipes and wastewater treatment solutions that are in place today? Or does it also include, parks, and other green infrastructures in urban areas that can function as buffer zones for extreme rainfall to manage overflooded existing systems? What are the prospects of different types of nature-based solutions that will make use of circular solutions in the design of future urban systems?
Photo of exhibition hall of Färgfabriken. Photo: Larsen
The workshop participants expressed that they appreciated the workshop initiative also for the opportunity to connect with other local actors being involved in managing different aspects of water in Stockholm. Some comments from participants were that “we should use art more often to communicate” and that working with water requires dialogues between different types of actors to manage cross-cutting aspects of water. Water in different forms are crossing boundaries between municipalities as well as internationally and requires coordination and communication between actors representing a broad range of competences. The participants were also asked to reflect upon what factors that can be drivers for change with a 50-year horizon. Some of the conclusions outline future challenges of different kinds:
The waste water systems are, to a large extent, made invisible to the users. As a consequence, they have disrupted the cyclic thinking for water management and treatment. As long as they are working – they are silent.
Even if the systems are among the best ones in the world, they are not optimal. We can increase the circular systems, reduce the environmental impact and use resources better.
Future climate change requires preparing for flooding in urban areas. This aspect was highlighted as highly likely by participants to influence a change in managing water supply in the Stockholm region within 50 years.
The workshop participants were also asked to reflect on what measures they thought would be acceptable for consumers. The answers showed that measures such as using rainwater to flush toilets and allowing parks be flooded to act as a buffer zone were thought to be accepted by citizens. For us researchers from KTH working with developing the water theme in the exhibition this brings some important thoughts onboard for further discussions and studies. Since the work with developing the exhibition was carried out during the pandemic of 2020-21 we were also delighted to be able to organize these workshops on-site in the exhibition hall and create dialogues on how art and science can bring about novel ideas, reflect on circularity of systems, and explore what can happen if water itself is given a voice to talk about future challenges and possibilities for urban water infrastructures in Stockholm.
Photo of exhibition hall of Färgfabriken. Photo: Larsen
Urban water imaginaries in exhibition – co-creative dialogues between science, art, and engineering (interview with Katarina Larsen in ABE school newsletter)
Visitors relations to water and their memories shared:
“It is euphoric to swim in the sea and be a part of the element for a while. At the same time, the power of waves and depth is extremely frightening. My stepfather drowned during a dive and it’s awful to imagine that situation, to drown and sink into the dark depths.”
“Drinking cold water that tastes like iron, in the countryside with my friend when we were small, after being out to play.”
“Water is what almost took my life on several occasions, but it is also what I can enjoy in everyday life. It is also my favorite drink although deep water is one of the few things I am afraid of. So a cycle, it gives and takes.”
“I sail and do a lot of boat riding so I have always felt safe on the water, even though I know that every time I am out by boat, the sea can kill me at any time. But I have learned to use the water and live with the water when I am out there. It is some kind of coexistence. I think the sea likes people to sail on it. Just like it likes the animals swimming inside it.”
“at an incredibly intense and warm and long concert where I was stuck in the middle completely without anything to drink, I got water from a total stranger and it was the best water I have ever had”
“Fishing trip with grandpa, herring and flounder”
Text by Katarina Larsen, researcher at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
The NordAI spring seminars is a seminar series, curated by Adam Wickberg and Tirza Meyer from the Mediated Planet Research Group at the Division. The series features contributions from leading scholars working with AI at the interface between the human and non-human world, exploring the question of what constitutes the environment through the lens of artificial intelligence.
Earth Science Planet Globe Environment Lights
The first seminar was held in February and featured Christer Andersson, analyst at the Swedish Defence Research Agency, Sweden on AI and analysis of environmental data: a perspective from the Swedish defence researchers?
Next up is Bill Adam. Claudio Segré Professor of Conservation, Graduate Institute, Geneva; Downing College Cambridge, who among many other things has spent a semester at the Division (2017).
The Digital Animal and Conservation by Algorithm
Digital innovation has brought about a revolution in devices to observe, track and locate animals. These range from fixed devices such as webcams and camera traps (trail cams), through airborne and satellite remote sensing to tracking and imaging devices fitted to living animals (collars and tags). Digital data from these devices is streamed, shared, archived and analysed, yielding new knowledge and new systems of knowledge accumulation, and enabling new modes of intervention in non-human lives and human society, ‘conservation by algorithm’. This seminar will discuss some of these innovations, and their implications. It will explore the new digital lives that animals take on within databases and information networks, and their implications for human understandings of nature, and for conservation management.
Discussant: Finn-Arne Jørgensen, Professor in Environmental History, University of Stavanger Recommended reading: Adams, William, “Digital Animals,” The Philosopher, vol. 108, no. 1 (2022).
Adams, William, “Geographies of conservation II: Technology, surveillance and conservation by algorithm,” Progress in Human Geography, vol. 43, no. 2 (2019): 337–350.
Sabine Höhler, Susanna Lidström and Tirza Meyer from the Mediated Planet project at the Division will present in the WASP-HS seminar series #frAIday, organized by Umeå University. In their presentation they aim to sketch the history of opening the ‘black box’ of the ocean.
The Ocean’s ‘Digital Twin’? Marine Environmental Data Through Time
Sabine Höhler, Susanna Lidström, and Tirza Meyer
Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm
Much hope is tied to the creation of a digital twin of the ocean based on an ever more extensive body of ocean data. Representing the ocean in the digital space is a way of analyzing and modeling the ocean in a ‘laboratory’ setting. Studying the ocean stripped from its natural complexity, so the idea, can better inform and instruct humans on how to interact with the ocean environment. Our twentieth century understanding of the ocean as a central ecosystem in the planetary environment would not have been possible without long-term information gathering. However, also ocean data generation is a messy and contested process. Its history is even more important to study since we ‘know’ the ocean mostly in mediated ways. We observe the ocean almost exclusively through scientific instruments, and we formulate ocean policies, legislation, and development goals based on data and increasingly on digital information. That this data has a history makes the past, present, and future of the digital ocean not just a scientific but a political issue.
Our presentation aims to sketch the history of opening the ‘black box’ of the ocean. We use examples of the Challenger expedition in the 1870s, of satellite oceanography in the 1990s, and of present-day autonomous ocean sensor systems. We ask how the specific tools and the information they generated mobilized different understandings of the ocean as resource and territory, as climate moderator and as carbon sink. Dredges, satellites and deep-ocean floats created new ocean knowledges, politics, and also new ontologies. No matter how inclusive, refined, and versatile the databases are, so our argument, the digital ocean will not be a simple 1:1 representation or “twin”. While the data corpus may be quite functional to model ocean behavior, it will always rest on selections serving particular purposes and interest
Nuclear-historical research at KTH is expanding! We are happy to announce that Melina Antonia Buns has joined us as a visiting post-doc researcher, based on a collaboration between NUCLEARWATERS, KTH’s Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment and The Greenhouse at the University of Stavanger. Melina was recently awarded a major research grant from the Norwegian Research Council, which will enable her to spend two years at KTH. The grant is linked to her project “Nuclear Nordics: Radioactive Waste Spatialities, Materialities and Societies in the Nordic Region, 1960s-1980s”. Read more about this exciting research endeavor at the website of the Norwegian Research Council.
Melina Antonia Buns at her new KTH office
Melina holds a BA in history, art history and Scandinavian studies from the University of Vienna, an MA in International and Global History and a PhD in history from the University of Oslo. In June 2021 she successfully defended her thesis “Green Internationalists: Nordic Environmental Cooperation, 1967-1988”. At KTH she will make use of her expertise in Nordic environmental history while moving into the nuclear-historical field.
Melina will present her research project “Nuclear Nordics” in the NUCLEARWATERS seminar series very soon. The seminar was originally scheduled for 26 January, but has been postponed. We will soon be back with a new date and time.
This text was originally published by Per Högselius on nuclearwaters.eu on 21 January 2022.
Gott nytt år! – Happy New Year! After snow-induced Christmas and winter holidays, the division is slowly but surely bustling back into busy work mode.
Our Higher Seminar Series, the colloquium of our division, starts again in two weeks. We are very glad to announce thatAliaksandr Piahanau, Wenner-Gren postdoc at the division, will be presenting his ongoing research. His talk “TheGreat Energy Supply Crisis: Fuels & Politics in Central Europe, 1918–21″ will be given on 24 January at 13.15-14.45 Stockholm time. If you want to join us from outside KTH, please send an email to higher-seminar@kth.se before 10 am (CET) the day you wish to attend.
Abstract
Even a short breakdown in fuel supplies can have profound and dramatic consequences for modern economies. This paper explores a major coal shortage in Central Europe after WW1 which shook local societies for two years. The dissolution of the Habsburg Empire in 1918 provides a narrower context to this study, while its immediate focus lies upon the development of diplomatic and economic relationships between Czechoslovakia – a WW1 winner state and an important coal exporter, and Hungary – a war losing state, which was a net coal importer. Underlining the scale of the Hungarian reliance on fuels from Czechoslovakia, this paper suggests that this dependence was one of the chief arguments that motivated Budapest to cede Slovakia to Prague’s control and, in general, to accept the peace terms proposed at the Paris conference. The paper demonstrates that cross-border energy interdependence substantially affected diplomatic relations in Central Europe immediately after WW1, privileging coal-exporting states over coal-importing states.
Apart from this exciting talk focussed on the subject of Eastern Central European History, many more presentations are coming up. Here is the current schedule:
24 January 13.15-14.45 CET: The Great Energy Supply Crisis: Fuels & Politics in Central Europe, 1918–21. Aliaksandr Piahanau, Wenner-Gren postdoc, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
7 February 13.15-14.45 CET: PM for PhD project. Erik Ljungberg, doctoral student, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
21 February13.15-14.45 CET: Air Epistemologies: Practices of Ecopoetry in Ibero-American Atmospheres. Nuno Marques, postdoc, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
7 March13.15-14.45 CET: From modern to modest imaginary? Learning about urban water infrastructure by comparing Northern and Southern cities. Timos Karpouzoglou, researcher, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment. Collaborators in this work: Mary Lawhon, Sumit Vij, Pär Blomqvist, David Nilsson, Katarina Larsen.
21 March13.15-14.45 CET: Warriors, wizards, and seers: representations of Saami in 17th and 18th century Sweden. Vincent Roy-Di Piazza, Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology, University of Oxford, UK
4 April13.15-14.45 CET: Historian’s toolbox: Technical solutions for doing research. Kati Lindström and Anja Moun Rieser, Division of History of Science, technology and Environment
2 May13.15-14.45 CET: Mid-seminar in doctoral education. Gloria Samosir, doctoral student, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
16 May13.15-14.45 CET: Nuclear Nordics: Histories of Radioactive Waste in the Nordic Region. Melina Antonia Buns, visiting postdoc KTH
30 May13.15-14.45 CET: A theoretical seminar on Heritage and Decay. Lize-Marie Van Der Watt, researcher, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
13 June13.15-14.45 CET: Science, the arts and engineering – dialogues and co-creative methods between KTH and Färgfabriken. Katarina Larsen and David Nilsson, researchers, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment
You can find the full and always updated Higher Seminar schedule here.
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