SIEGFRIED Evens
| Post: | Visiting Research Fellow (SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit) |
| Other posts: | Visiting Fellow (SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit) |
| Email: | sce24@sussex.ac.uk |
Biography
Siegfried Evens is a historian and STS scholar specialising in technology, energy, (environmental) risk, and disaster.
He mobilises empirically grounded historical research to make contributions to theoretical discussions in STS as well as policy discussions. His research methodology combines a transnational framework and Digital Humanities approaches. With his broad language proficiency (7 languages), he mobilises archival documents and interviews from different national contexts.
He has also worked with various (nuclear) policymakers in Sweden, France, the US, and Belgium to introduce historical and societal perspectives into debates on nuclear safety and security.Evens also regularly contributes to public debates through debate pieces, podcasts, and blog posts.
Current project
Throughout 2026, he will be a Visiting Fellow at SPRU and the 鶹ӳ Energy Group, where he wants to work more closely on uncertainty in innovation and the role of nuclear power in the energy transition.
His stay is part of the research project "Ageing Atoms: Nuclear Maintenance Techniques in Sweden and the UK (1980-2026)," funded by Formas. The project investigates more closely the uncertainties regarding ageing nuclear infrastructures, lifetime extensions of nuclear power plants, and material decay issues.Central to the study is the maintenance work that goes on in nuclear power plants and the people who do it. It will particularly focus on the techniques – types of knowledge that are not necessarily written down on how to use or repair a technology – that these workers possess.
The project is based at the Department of Thematic Studies (Tema-T) at Linköping University in Sweden, where he is employed as a postdoctoral researcher.
Past projects
Before coming to SPRU, in 2024-2025, he was a Junior Postdoctoral Fellow at KU Leuven with his project ”Atoms from Abroad: A Transnational History of Nuclear Energy in Belgium (1953-1985).” The project studies Belgium’s nuclear energy system in the context of wider transnational connections between Belgian and foreign public actors, and particularly uses this case to study three interconnected themes: urban controversies over industrial siting, the roots of energy transitions in colonialism and extractivism, and the challenges faced by small states in governing nuclear technologies largely developed abroad.
He obtained his PhD at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm in 2024. In his PhD thesis, titled “Streams, Steams, and Steels: A Transnational History of Risk Regulation in Nuclear Power Plants (1850-1985),” he researched the history of nuclear safety regulation in the US, France, and Sweden, with a focus on water and steam technologies. His research was part of the ERC-funded NUCLEARWATERS project, led by Per Högselius, which had the ambition to rewrite the history of nuclear energy through the lens of water. He is currently writing a monograph based on this research.
Previously, he has also worked on the impact of mining safety debates on European integration, as well as on fire safety in Belgium. The latter was the topic of his MA thesis and resulted in a bestselling book in 2017 on the ”Á l’Innovation" department store fire.
Besides KU Leuven and KTH, Evens also worked at Virginia Tech and Uppsala University.
His articles were published in the European Review of History, Water History, Technikgeschichte, Enterprises et Histoire, and Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, among others. An edited volume he co-edited with Per Högselius on the “nuclear-water nexus” will appear with MIT Press in 2025.
Publications
See .
Role
Visiting Fellow