MISSION STATEMENT
Researching the modern & contemporary history of technology, societal transitions and sustainability challenges
Making historical sense of the complex roles of technology in societal transitions and sustainability challenges requires bridging the two cultures of the humanities and the sciences.
We brings technology to the study of history: we make visible, and scrutinize, how technology matters in modern and contemporary history, for better and worse.
We also bring history to the engineering sciences, inviting these to look beyond tech hypes, scares and rationales. We make visible the long-term dynamics of technical change, and how it interacts with societal debates, conflicts and transitions.
Our current program addresses ongoning public and scholarly debates on the role of technology in social and environmental ‘crises’, ‘grand challenges’, and ‘sustainability transitions.’
We develop research, education, and public outreach on the ambivalent roles of technology in causing, mediating, and solving such challenges as the urban mobility challenge, the energy challenge, environmental challenges, and global inequality. We engage with public & policy debates and stakeholders that range from the local (e.g. the sustainable urban mobility challenge) to the global (e.g. transcontinental resource and knowledge infrastructure entwining the (un)sustainability histories of distant places across the globe).
The History Lab treasures active collaboration with colleagues around the world and has been very active in building research infrastructure for transnational collaboration. This includes initiating and coordinating the research community Tensions of Europe. Technology and the Making of Europe; hosting the secretariat and co-organizing the annual conferences of the Society for the History of Technology SHOT; acting as local organiser of the 2020 Congress of the International Committee for the History of Technology ICOHTEC (theme: a history of technology for an age of crisis); and hosting the editor-in-chief for the history of technology journals Technology and Culture (the SHOT quarterly) and ICON (the ICOHTEC journal).
Engineers and societal challenges
1815-2015
Technology is often identified as both cause of, and solution to, social and ecological challenges. How can we use technology to solve problems, without creating new ones? This book discusses the role of engineering in our age of grand challenges—by drawing lessons from the past. It examines why and how engineers have engaged with such ‘grand challenges’ since the inception of modern engineering roughly two centuries ago. It asks why some technological solutions have unexpectedly created new problems. And it studies how engineers have coped with technology’s puzzling ability to both help and harm, with special attention to historical experiences with technocratic and participative innovation.
