How Should History of Technology Be Written? Some Lessons from an Ongoing Research Project on the Global History of Nuclear Energy

Technikgeschichte. 2021. Vol. 88. No. 2. P. 185–190.

Lindström K., Gutting A., Högselius P., Evens S., Klüppelberg A., Khandozhko R., Storm A.

In the last ten years, history of technology has transformed from a national, single-authored endeavour to an increasingly transnational or even global undertaking that follows the cross boundary flows of matter, scientific and 
technological knowledge as well as experts and organisations. Transnational history of technology such as in the Making Europe book series has highlighted the asymmetrical relations of power and mobility in the state-sanctioned and unofficial flows of technology and expertise, without sacrificing the materiality of the technologies. Our own international project on global history of nuclear energy, in which the seven of us have been working together since 2018, is part of this movement. The following is an outcome of the many methodological discussions in our heterogenous team on how history of technology can and should be written. 

Keywords: history of technology, methods of historical research, nuclear history