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
SOY STORIES team: presentations and roundtables at UFFS in Chapecó, Brazil
Next to doing lots of interesting field work and enjoying
Now published: Technology & Culture — October 2023 issue
Read the latest research, essays, and book reviews in Technology
Erik van der Vleuten nominated best master program teacher university-wide
EHL's Erik van der Vleuten was among the three final
Mila Davids awarded with Embassy Science Fellowship 2023
NWO, in collaboration with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Technology & Culture 64.3 (2023) now published!
We are proud to present the next issue of Technology and
EVENTS
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.
ONGOING RESEARCH
(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.
