Research

Global Sustainability: Pasts, Presents, Futures tarries with two overall research questions:

• Sustainability issues tend to transcend time and space; they should therefore not be studied in geographical or temporal isolation. At the same time, actors/ actants across the globe experience and perceive diverse and locally specific challenges that we associate with ‘sustainability’ (a Western and contested concept). How can we conceptualize and research the plurality ànd connectedness of sustainability histories?
• Understandings of the history of sustainability issues tend to interact (explicitly or implicitly) with imaginaries of (un)sustainable futures and of available action repertoires. As such, historical knowledges have a (covert and sometimes overt) performativity. How can we understand the performativity, actionability or transformativity of historical sustainability knowledge and knowledge-making? And how can we mobilize this potential in a constructive manner?

At the Eindhoven History Lab, we pursue three lines of research to address these questions.

EHL researchers: Erik van der Vleuten, Frank Veraart, Mila Davids, Jan Pieter Smits, Nathaly Yumi da Silva, Maliene Kip, Caroline Kreysel

Ongoing research programs:

• SOY STORIES (2023-2028): This program studies the connected histories of the Brazilian deforestation and pesticide crises and the Dutch Nitrogen crisis, connected by the soy supply chain. At the same time, it investigates if and how transdisciplinary historical research can simultaneously enrich historiography ànd contribute to ongoing efforts to work for better futures. SOY STORIES is funded by the NWO Open Competition scheme. See the project website.
• Sustainability trade-offs in the Netherlands’ entangled modernization STONEM (2023-2028): STONEM studies how Dutch imports of resources have been affecting economic, social, and environmental developments elsewhere in the world. It studies how commodification processes changed western perceptions, global environments and people’s livelihoods in the last 200 years. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, STONEM focuses particularly on the entangled histories connected to imports of metals and biobased oils. The project explicitly connects to contemporary challenges in resources for the energy and global food transitions. Also funded by the NWO Open Competition scheme. See the project website.

Completed program:

• Global Resources and Sustainability GREASE (2018-2023): The GREASE program (Global resources and sustainability of European modernization) built a research network and research agenda to explore entangled sustainability histories across the global North-South divide, and connected to present-day policy and stakeholder debates on inequality, well-being and sustainability challenges. Funded by the NWO Internationalizing humanities program. Project website; Key publication 2022; key publication 2020; key publication 2019; final project report

EHL researchers:  Jonas van der Straeten, Ruth Oldenziel, Frauke Behrend, Eric Berkers

This research line studies sustainable practices and innovation that emerge from diverse user communities. These often escape policymakers’ view or met with downright hostility and discouragement. We focus particular on urban sustainable mobility histories and futures.

Ongoing research programs:

• Cycling Cities: The Global Experience. Cycling Cities: The Global Experience is a research and publication project. It covers 150 years of cycling policy and practice around the world in 50 cities in 25 countries–and growing.Cycling Cities is an invaluable resource for the growing global community of policymakers, community groups, students, and teachers. We are pleased to announce the Cycling Cities: The African Experience. Curious? We have an exhibit Bicycles are Forever in Tamale in Ghana at Nuku studio, May-September 2024. And we are crowdfunding: Help our African authors publish the book by donating.
• Asia, Africa as sites of ‘hidden’ sustainability: Perspectives for an actionable historiography (2022-26). The Non-Western world offers a wealth of long-established practices that are based on the efficient, sustainable, and innovative use of technology and resources. These practices are often overlooked and marginalized, for example, because their underlying motivations are non-economic or because they take place in the context of an informal or weakly regulated economy. Oftentimes, actors themselves do not associate these practices with sustainability, but with pragmatic reactions to a relative scarcity of resources and capital (typically framed as “poverty”). Research on Non-Western contexts has recently provided us with instructive case studies, e.g. on water and energy provision in urban “off-grid spaces”; two and three-wheeled transport; vernacular practices of building; or urban food self-provisioning. This project researches such instances of non-Western hidden, quiet, silent, but proven sustainability. Key publication.
• Beheer en onderhoud van de openbare ruimte in Nederland,1800 – 2030. Een verkennend onderzoek (2023-24). In infrastructure studies, repair and maintenance counts as a major, yet often unacknowledged ‘sustainability’ strategy. This exploratory research mapped the terrain in the Netherlands in collaboration with the Foundation Managing Public Space.

EHL staff includes: Mila Davids, Harry Lintsen, Eric Berkers.

We are currently opening a new research line on the twin digital and green transition.

Projects:

• The semiconductor paradox. The connected sustainability histories of two high-tech regions: Brainport, the Netherlands, and Hsinchu, Taiwan (2022-2026). This project studied the entangled history of two high-tech regions, Brainport region in the Netherlands and Hsinchu in Taiwan. Taiwanese and Dutch scholars jointly investigate how this intertwining came about, the drivers behind it, and what it means for local players’ development and regional networking. This research contextualizes present-day issues such as the geopolitical debate on dependency on key firms such as ASML and TSMC, and also addresses the semiconductor paradox: While semiconductors are often seen as the solution to the sustainability problem – smart solutions – less attention is paid to the less sustainable aspects of semiconductors and their production methods. See the podcast; key publication; recent book
• History of the Brainport region (2023-25).
• History of Philips research (2023-24).

• The Tensions of Europe (the Europe-based interdisciplinary history of technology community) 2nd umbrella research program on Technology & societal challenges 1850-2050;
• The research program of the Research Group on Technology, Environment and Resources of the above program;
•  The interuniversity 4TU Center for the History of Technology in the Netherlands