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The History Lab at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is a prominent center for the history of technology and socio-ecological change. We investigate the ambivalent roles of technology/ technique/ material culture in socio-ecological challenges and transformations from a long-term perspective, connecting past, present and future. We are embedded in the Technology, Innovation & Society group at TU/e, and host the Foundation for the History of Technology SHT, the secretariat of the Society for the History of Technology SHOT, and the editorship of Technology and Culture.

Making histories that take technology seriously—to inform sustainable socio-technical futures

LATEST NEWS

EVENTS

At October 16, Ruth Oldenziel will give a lecture at Studium Generale, TUE. More info:  Link From the SG website:

Daniel Barber, the new TUE professor of architectural history and theory, has kindly accepted to give an SG lecture on

From June 29 to July 5, the ICHST will host its 27th congress in Ōtepoti Dunedin, New Zealand. The theme

SHOT 2025 Conference

9 October 2025 – 08:0011 October 2025 – 17:00

The 2025 SHOT Annual Meeting takes place at the Belval Campus of the University of Luxembourg in the second week

EHL current research program: Global Sustainability: Pasts, Presents & Futures

Our current EHL umbrella research program studies today’s omnipresent debates on global crises, ‘grand’ societal challenges, and Sustainable Development Goals—and the ambivalent role(s) of technology therein—in historical perspective.

Find our research lines and programs here

RESEARCH
Latest publications

SCHOLARLY JOURNALS

TECHNOLOGY & CULTURE

We are very proud to host Technology and Culture, the quarterly of the Society for the History of Technology SHOT. In 2020-2025 Ruth Oldenziel succeeds Suzanne Moon (University of Oklahoma) as editor-in-chief of this pre-eminent history of technology journal.  The first issue prepared by her Eindhoven team was the 2020 July issue.

Previously, EHL/ Foundation SHT have also hosted Hermione Giffard, editor of the journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology ICON. Emeritus associate professor Gijs Mom founded and edited the journal Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies until 2017/18.

(CLASSICS) TEXTBOOK: Engineers and societal challenges 1815-2015

This book pioneers the historiography of engineering & societal challenges ca. 1815-2015. It examines why and how engineers have engaged with ‘grand challenges’, and whose challenges these were (with focus on societal, enterprise, and user challenges); why some technological solutions have unexpectedly created new problems; and how engineers have sought to anticipate technology’s puzzling ability to both help and harm (with special attention to technocratic and participatory innovation). The book content has found its way to over 10.000 students at TU/e and elsewhere.

(CLASSICS) IMPACT: De kwetsbare welvaart van Nederland

Een duurzaamheidsgeschiedenis van Nederland

[A Dutch Sustainability History]

This book pioneered the writing of a “sustainability history” of the Netherlands since 1850. It presents a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative ‘sustainability monitors’ depicting the state of affairs in 1850, 1910, 1970 and 2015, with qualitative narrative analysis to interpret, explain, and at times challenge the quantitative patterns thus identified. The Dutch language version has become a reference in Dutch political debates. The English version Well-being, Sustainability and Social Development: The Netherlands 1850–2050 is available in open access here.

(CLASSICS) BOOK SERIES: Technology and the Making of Europe 1850-2000

This prize-winning book series reframes the history of European integration and fragmentation through the lens of technology actors, practices and processes. Six richly illustrated and compelling volumes discuss how experts, innovators, users and governance bodies fundamentally reshaped European space, daily lives, identities and politics from the mid 19th Century onward. Go to the series website

  

(CLASSICS) Technology and the Making of the Netherlands in the long 20th century

Read more about the contested modernization of the Netherlands as a technological nation.

Johan Schot, Harry Lintsen, and Arie Rip (eds.), Technology and the making of the Netherlands. The Age of Contested Modernization, 1850-1970 (MIT Press, 2010)

This book is the English-language translation of the capstone synthesis volume of the 13-volume Dutch-language book series on technology in the Netherlands in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Eindhoven History Lab was established in 2017 as the local umbrella for Eindhoven university’s history of technology researchers and the in-house Foundation for the History of Technology SHT (Stichting Historie der Techniek). The Lab is locally embedded in the Technology, Innovation & Society section of the School of Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology. Internationally the Lab is a proactive partner in the scholarly associations Society for the History of Technology SHOT,  the International Committee for the History of Technology ICOHTEC, and the  Tensions of Europe research community. In the Dutch speaking world, we participate in the NW Posthumus interuniversity research school for social and economic history.

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