Update on my PhD-progress

Hopefully you have all had a great summer, including some well-deserved vacation, icecream, sunshine, and – depending where you are – some refreshing swims! As my doctoral education is slowly but surely coming to a close, it is time to give a brief overview where I am and what the stepping stones are, I still need to reach.

As of now, there is only about half a year left to finish my dissertation. All parts of my cumulative dissertation based on articles are fairly developed. In my kappa, the text that frames the thesis and discusses theory, research questions, and the actual technocratic culture analysis, I am focussing right now on updating the literature review. Here I am thankful for the valuable comments that I got from Eglė Rindzevičiūtė during my final seminar at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH. It is important to relate my work, especially my theoretical contribution regarding technocratic culture, to that of established scholars in the field. Apart from the literature review, I need to adjust the conclusion accordingly. Then I only need to shorten and improve the text.

My first article discussing South-Ukraine Energy Complex is already accepted in the journal Europe-Asia Studies and is scheduled to be published in 2024. Apart from the proofs, I am not expecting to do anymore work on this one.

The second text is the book Per Högselius and me have been writing together about the Soviet nuclear archipelago. Here the main work has been done and the finalised manuscript is with the publisher, Central European University Press. There will be one last round of edits, which cannot be substantial.

Number three about the creation of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the genesis of a technocratic working culture on-site had been handed in to NTM Technikgeschichte at the beginning of this week. I expect quite a lot of work that still needs to flow into this one before it can be published. But regarding the dissertation, it has developed far enough.

Article number four is also about Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. But it focusses purely on an interpretation of this nuclear power plant from an hydropower planning perspective. Chernobyl will be interpreted as the 7th extension to the Dnieper Cascade, a series of six subsequent hydropower plants along the Dnieper. In another future article I will discuss the knowledge transfer that took place here. But for this dissertation, article number four will focus on the links between the Dnieper Cascade and Chernobyl. A draft exists, but it needs substantial work to go into it. If you are interested about that one, you can listen to my presentation at the upcoming ESEH Conference in Bern in the Panel “Nuclear Environments” that Aske Hennelund Nielsen and me have organised and that takes place on Friday morning next week.

Text number five is a chapter in the edited Nuclear Water Nexus Volume about the fishing enterprise in the contaminated cooling pond of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. This text as well as the volume is with the publisher now. I assume there will be major edits needed to it. Once again, for the context of the dissertation it should be in decent form though.

The last article of my dissertation is written together with Kati Lindström about the Estonian Nuclear Power Plant never actually built at Võrtsjärv. This text is in the writing stage and our developed draft needs to be finished.

Apart from the finalisation of all of these texts, my manuscript needs to pass the evaluation of an external reviewer first. I will hand it in most probably in September and hope for it to be accepted soon. Next, a lot of formalia need to be in place and the committee as well as my opponent need to agree upon a date. But this is taken care of by my main supervisor, Per Högselius. Last but not least the dissertation needs to be printed and distributed. All in all I hope to defend my dissertation in February 2024. But in the past I that date has been postponed because of reasons outside of my influence, so we need to be realistic about this.

In general I will focus on my writing during the höst termin. Apart from that I will continue to act as the PhD-representative for history and philosophy at our department. Occasionally I might step in as a teacher in our Swedish Society course. Next week I will be presenting in Bern at this year’s ESEH Conference. In September there will be a workshop on energy transitions at Södertörn University in Stockholm which I helped to organise and I was invited to the KTH WaterCentre to give a talk about my research. Besides these tasks, I will try to stay away from any more time-consuming commitments. Let’s hope that everything works out! Any major updates will be posted here.