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mathijsboom.bsky.social
Historian of science, environment and energy, working on Earth histories, water, and politics of nuclear energy | Postdoc researcher @iisg-amsterdam.bsky.social | PhD from @uva.nl
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JOB: Full Professorship in “Forest History and Sustainable Development” at Freiburg University, Germany. Application deadline is 6. April 2025. #envhist uni-freiburg.de/stellenangeb...

We're putting on a conference! "We" being me, @odinnmelsted.bsky.social & @michielbron.bsky.social as part of the Managing Scarcity project. Workshop on Alternative Energy Histories Dates: October 20-21, 2025 Location: Maastricht University Abstracts due: April 4, 2025 managingscarcity.com/waeh/

"Capitalists’ sole concern, as Marx observed, is how to turn money into more money, and it’s not clear that renewables are a very good vehicle for doing this, regardless of how cheap they are to run." www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"If we look [at] overall energy use at a societal or global level, far from there being a sequence in which coal replaces organic energy, followed by oil and then nuclear power and then renewables, what we see is the accumulation and agglomeration of energy sources." substack.com/home/post/p-...

The first Thijssen-Schoute fellowship is open to advanced doctoral students and recent doctorated. This new fellowship is an initiative of the Huygens Institute and the Dr C. Louise Thijssen-Schoute Foundation. Apply by 15 May 2025. More information 👉

Anti-nuclear activists in the 70s and 80s often pointed out the entanglement between civil and military nuclear tech. A view expressed in this great 1985 photomontage by Peter Kennard.

It's fascinating to see the logistical detail that went into preparing direction action against the dumping of nuclear waste at sea in (I guess) 1979 or 1980. Protesters mapped and photographed transportation routes and distributed detailed guides for anyone wating to organize their own blockade.

From the archives of the IISH: students at Amsterdam's Free University (VU) reflecting on energy, war and crisis in 1980. I especially like the cartoon of windmills stuck on top of the VU's brutalist main building. @vuhistoricus.bsky.social @iisg-amsterdam.bsky.social

These positions are still open, please share widely and apply if you are eligible and interested in joining us in Stockholm! #envhist #envhum #anthropocene

Somewhat surprised to see how anti-nuclear pacifists in the 70s, like the Frenchman Lanzo del Vasto, took their inspiration directly from Gandhi and King. I assumed XR's claim to that non-violent tradition was questionable @xrglobal.bsky.social @xrnl.bsky.social

These 1977 works by Namibian artist Christine Marais, commissioned by the Rössing uranium mine, are fascinating. Don't know much about Marais, but they bring to mind Kathryn Yusoff's critique of Anthropocene geology.

How much would solar #geoengineering change the appearance of the sky? A new paper by Ansar Lemon et al simulates the appearance of a sky with a pretty large amount of sulphate aerosol added to the stratosphere and a sky with no such additions. They assume very little pollution in the troposphere.

Delving into a long-running controversy over the use of Namibian uranium in Dutch nuclear installations, from c. 1977 to 1990. It's a fascinating case: activists worked hard to shed light on the complex chain that led from uranium mines to nuclear energy.

For corporate and military reasons, the source of uranium for nuclear energy is often veiled in secrecy. In 1977, Dutch anti-apartheids activists and MPs were challenging the gov't to stop uranium shipments with 'less desirable origins,' particularly from South-African-occupied Namibia.

The most iconic figure in the environmental sciences is the Keeling Curve, the CO₂ record from Mauna Loa, Hawaii. @noaa.gov had a wonderful site where you could visualize and download these data, and now it's just gone. These data belong to us and we should not let this happen!

More immediately horrific are things happening right now, but this is really bad. NOAA has been central to climate science for decades.

Just stumbled—again—on these amazing works by Vija Celmins: stones and painted bronze. (MoMA's collection.) Still captivated by the attention to mineral detail and how these question the boundary between human and natural 'artifacts'. It's modern art speaking to seventeenth-century concerns.

Hiervoor doe je het toch, klimaatactivisme. (Uit een NRC-strip van Renske de Greef uit 2019.)

"The family tree doesn't want no coal-powered energy" — the translation actually rhymes! A ca. 1985 poster testifying to the long struggle against the recently-closed Hemweg power station in Amsterdam. (And yes, I'm part of the 'familie Boom' too.) @phvandam.bsky.social found this one.

Fascinerend contrast tussen twee verhalen in @nrc.nl dit weekend. Eén over SMR-reactoren, waar een enorm booster-sfeertje omheen hangt. En één over de lange erfenis van de Limburgse kolenmijnen: voor mensen het het landschap. Energie van het verleden en—zou het?—energie van de toekomst.

CFP: The Montreal Moment (deadline: 15 Dec). www.roosevelt.nl/en/nieuws/ca...

Beautiful dancing and rustling of starlings on my late afternoon walk.

CfP: Predicting Europe. Histories of the Future in Post-1945 Europe Deadline: 17 January

Antiquarianism and hydraulic knowledge: this 1588 engraving presented antiquarian finds around the ruins of Brittenburg, identified as a Roman outpost on Holland's coast at the silted mouth of the Old Rhine, alongside the (failed) 1571 attempt to drain the hinterlands through culverts.

It’s been a year to the day since defending my PhD thesis. I’ve returned to works that inspired my research on Earth histories in the early modern Low Countries. Here’s thread of some publications I’m indebted to.