Biennial Report 2019 – 2020 Integrative Humanities
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Biennial Report 2019 – 2020 Integrative Humanities Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment with KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment with KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory postal address KTH Royal Institute of Technology SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden visiting address Teknikringen 74 D, 5th floor, Stockholm Internet address https://www.kth.se/philhist/historia e-mail address [email protected] editors Sofia Jonsson and Sverker Sörlin design Matilda Lindqvist, Prime Remains of the first Swedish Antarctic Expedition (1901 – 1903) at Snow Hill island, Antarctica, documented by Swedish-Argentine research expedition CHAQ 2020. cover photo Division researchers Kati Lindström and Dag Avango (also at LTU) took part of the Base camp and the remains of the first Swedish Antarctic expedition. Photo: Kati Lindström. Expedition (1901 – 1903) at Snow Hill island, Antarctica, documented by Swedish-Argentine research expedition CHAQ 2020. Division researchers Kati Lindström and Dag Avango (also at LTU) took part of the expedition. Photo: Kati Lindström. print US-AB June 2021 TRITA-ABE-RPT-2116 ISBN: 978-91-7873-939-4 Contents Foreword 6 Three Years with the Posthumanities Hub .....62 Life as a Humanities PhD Student ....................64 CHAQ2020: Expedition to the Key Information 8 Continent of Ice and Science ..............................66 The Division .............................................................. 9 Environmental Humanities Integrative Humanities 68 Laboratory ..............................................................12 Our Work Environment ........................................14 Integrative Humanities Crisis Research ...........69 Undergraduate Teaching .....................................16 Digital Teaching in Times of Crises ...................71 PhD Training ............................................................18 Water Infrastructure in Times of Crisis: Defenses ..................................................................20 Time to Rethink the Narrative? ..........................72 Research ...................................................................22 A Journey Towards Internationalization Funding – and the Integrative Vision ...............24 with Reduced Mobility .........................................74 Trends in Publishing .............................................28 Organizing my Doctoral Defense Diversity, Concentration, Continuity ................36 During the COVID19 Pandemic ..........................76 Communicating the Division Archives ...................................................................77 in the Digital Sphere .............................................38 Travelogue: Visiting Ignalina Nuclear Faculty, Staff, and PhD Students Power Plant During the Pandemic ....................79 2019 to 2020 ...........................................................39 Change of Plans .....................................................81 Ending up in Lockdown .......................................82 General 46 Writing an International PhD Thesis During a Pandemic ..........................84 Higher Seminars at the Division .......................47 Postdoc in Crisis (or not?).....................................86 SPHERE – a Podcast on the Evolution Strategic Collaboration on User of Global Environmental Governance ............49 Perspectives and Co-creation in Streaming STREAMS – Conversations Future Green Cities ...............................................88 on the Environmental Humanities, Experiencing the Pandemic, First Hand ..........89 August 5 – 7, 2020 ..................................................50 Archipelago Lectures no 8 and 9: The Division – a Short History 90 Two Ways to go Public ..........................................52 Crosscuts – Ruptured Times ...............................54 Annals of Crosscuts ...............................................56 Backlists 98 How to Occupy Climate Change Research? ....57 The Chinese Connection ......................................58 Visiting scholars 2019 – 2020 .............................99 Understanding Local Innovation for Commissions of Trust, Prizes and Awards .... 102 the Global Water Goals ........................................59 Events .................................................................... 106 Large Humanities Projects Projects ................................................................. 118 at a Technical University ......................................61 Publications ......................................................... 136 Foreword The Division of History at KTH has published transitions. We will continue to combine building reports since the beginning of the 1990s. Until strength in our core areas of history – history of 2011 they were annual and contained primarily science, of technology, and of environment. But basic information on changes in staff, courses we will also continue to populate our research offered, seminars held, and activities by individual groups and projects with specialists in fields such as members of the Division: publications, conference anthropology, ecology, film, linguistics, education, presentations, PhD degrees. As the Division grew and STS, literary scholarship, media studies and many diversified, we decided to make the reporting present others, as our research needs and our innovativeness more dimensions and include some reflexivity on our require. This also applies to our broad networks and ongoing evolution. We decided that it could be a way collaborations, which reach around the world and of enhancing the collective learning experience: what include scholars from all sorts of backgrounds, as it means to be part of a scholarly environment and well as practitioners, stakeholders, and activists. think about how it works and why. It could also help We also think this is the way to build humanities improve the quality of our academic performance, knowledge at a large technical university: not by and of the Division as a work place and a community. cultivating a multitude of small disciplinary units, It took some time to develop the new concept, so but as a set of issue-oriented knowledge areas where the first report of the new series did not appear until multiple humanities can thrive. 2015 and covered the years 2012 to 2014. The reports This report follows our tradition to open up for that followed have been biennial, and this one for as many voices as possible. We wish to reflect the 2019 – 2020 is the fourth in this new series. The diversity of our activities – and the conviviality and biennial reports have also been thematized: Defining satisfaction we find in working on urgent issues in a Humanities (2015 – 2016), Transformative Humanities spirit of responsibility and humanism. (2017 – 2018), and now Integrative Humanities We would like to thank all contributors – of (2019 – 2020). texts, visuals, ideas, editorial assistance, and for The theme of the current report reflects our sharing updated information. Special thanks go to thinking around how humanities knowledge is the members of our editorial support group, Fredrik gaining in significance, which is increasingly by Bertilsson, Achim Klüppelberg and Klara Müller, and engaging in broad and complex problems that to Klara Müller and Linus Salö for their efforts to require multiple competencies. In the previous assemble and analyze publishing data. decade we started the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, a truly integrative effort which has successfully addressed themes such as Sofia Jonsson and Sverker Sörlin urban climate crises, ecologies of waste, and just Editors 6 7 The Division — SABINE HÖHLER Key Reporting on a two-year time period is hard when one year so utterly clogs our memories. In retrospect, Information 2019 was just another busy and successful year for our Division, while 2020 was exceptional. The year 2020 was extremely noisy and incredibly still. Covid colonized not only our lives, it also unsettled the Division’s buoyant optimism and familiar work modes. Now, in early 2021, we still have not fully adjusted to the social distance that comes with physical distancing. I read this as a good sign. As humanities and social science scholars, we should be attentive to changing forms and formats of sociality, to our social commons, to possibilities of participation and agency. In 2020, like other work places in the world, we complied with new rules and directives. We tried to attune to makeshift solutions as much as we could. Many of us still feel the burden of the extra work in their bones. But I dare say we were also curious and creative in transitioning to online meeting formats and familiarizing ourselves with new teaching and learning tools. We experimented successfully with online PhD defenses. And we welcomed the unexpected advantages of connecting to people who had seemed distant but suddenly appeared in our on-distance meetings. Those were not international colleagues only. The Division’s colloquium series was never as frequented by visitors from the greater 8 9 Stockholm region as in 2020. Our to redefine what “on-site” should mean perceptions of proximity were turned for us in the future. And we should upside down. Our traveling went down never get used to a situation which to zero, as conferences were called off, forces us to welcome new colleagues national borders closed and traveling to in an online setting. We want to be places which had seemed near became able