Research Network "Challenging Europe: Technology, Environment and the Quest for Resource Security (EurReS)" (2018-2021)
The EurReS Network consists of international researchers from 10 countries. It is part of the Tensions of Europe Research Group on Environment, Technology and Resources. It is open to all interested researchers. Workshops and conferences are planned in Aarhus, Paris, Lisbon and St. Petersburg. The research network aims to develop an innovative, transnational research framework for the his¬to¬rical investigation of natural resource challenges in Europe. It will focus on resource perceptions and imaginaries, resource geographies and global resource cycles, resource technologies and poli¬cies and the environmental, social and political impacts of resource extraction and use in a transna¬tional perspective. The research network responds to contemporary resource challenges and has the major goal to deepen the understanding of the historical roots of resource perceptions, policies and practices in Europe. Specific goals are the development of col¬laborative research proposals and scholarly publications.

 

Shaping Cultures of Prediction: Knowledge, Authority and the Construction of Climate Change (2013-2017)
 
This project examines the emergence of climate modeling as a culture of prediction in the formative period between ca. 1960 and 1985. Climate modeling has played a major role in forging a scientific consensus about climatic change. Scientific consensus, however, tends to hide the social relations, complex negotiations and tangible interests behind the consensus itself. It straightens the diversity of scientific perceptions and the complexities of historical processes that have shaped it. This project aims at analyzing the scientific conflicts, social processes and underlying presumptions that contributed to (1) the emergence of climate modeling as a predominant research strategy, and (2) the controversial application of these models as predictive tools. The project will show how climate modeling and its uses emerged from a competition between different knowledge claims and epistemic standards and attained hegemonic status within a diversity of knowledge cultures.
 

Research team:
Aarhus University: Matthias Heymann (project-leader), Janet Martin-Nielsen, Dania Achermann, Gabriel Henderson
 
Collaborators:
Mike Hulme and Martin Mahoney, Kings College London
Sverker Sörlin and Nina Wormbs, KTH Stockholm
Gregory Good, Center for History of Physics, College Park, USA