The Specter of Scarcity: Hanna Vikström defends her PhD thesis

Last Friday my PhD student Hanna Vikström defended her PhD thesis, entitled “The Specter of Scarcity: Metal Shortages in Historical Perspective, 1870-2015“. Mats Ingulstad from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), a leading expert in the historical study of strategic natural resources, acted as opponent. The venue at KTH was filled to the brim of people eager to take part of this festive intellectual event. For two hours we could enjoy a marvellous discussion between the two, centering on questions such as: Can Sweden really be regarded as a “small nation” in the global world of natural resource extraction? Has Sweden behaved like a colonial power in the resource field, even though it has not had any former colonies? And: To what extent is it possible to draw on experiences from metals scarcity when seeking to understand resource scarcity more generally?

A diverse examination committee, consisting of Julia Lajus from St Petersburg, Anna Sténs from Umeå and Anders Hansson from Linköping, contributed with further questions, for example, about the temporal dimension in the historical study of natural resources: perhaps it is necessary to go back much further in time – at least 500 years? – if we want to fully grasp what hides behind the notion of “resource scarcity”?

Hanna Vikström’s PhD research has aroused a lot of attention already during her studies. She has written popular-science articles and given public lectures on the topic of metals scarcity. She also spent several months at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia. The five articles in her PhD thesis have all been either already published, or are accepted for publication – all in internationally renowned journals.

Hanna will now embark on the next stage in her academic career: a 2-year post-doc stay at Uppsala University.