Siegfried Evens

I am a political historian, specialised in the history of risk and disaster. My broader research interests relate to risk studies, disaster studies, international and transnational history, European integration, Belgian political history, fire safety, mining history, and nuclear risks.

I graduated in 2016 as Master of Arts in History at the University of Leuven, Belgium.
My Master’s thesis researched the political impact of the fire in department store ‘A l’Innovation’ in Brussels in 1967, examining  the role of the disaster in the broader politics of prevention in Belgium on the one hand, and the theoretical relevance of Disaster Studies for political history and vice versa on the other. This Master’s thesis was published as a monograph in 2017 as ‘De brand in de Innovation: de ramp die Belgiê veranderde’.

I am actively engaged in the popularisation and valorisation of my research and history in general. My research on the Innovation fire featured in national newspapers and TV-broadcasts in Belgium and the Netherlands. I also contributed to the organisation of the official 50-year commemmoration of the disaster in 2017. In addition, I regularly write opinion pieces and analyses for Belgian news outlets, for example on fire safety and mining risks, and give lectures to broader audiences and preventionists. Finally, I obtained an Acadenic Teacher Degree at KU Leuven in 2017, conducting multiple teaching internships and participating in a research project on multilingual and diverse teaching contexts.

I currently am a doctoral researcher and candidate at the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). My PhD-project holds the provisionary working title ‘Risking Meltdown: The Global Governance and Management of Nuclear Cooling through Technology and Environment (1950s-1990s)’. I am researching the global management and governance of risks related to nuclear meltdowns by transnational organisations and communities, concentrating on water and nuclear cooling. The focus will also mostly be on Western-Europe and North-America and on three major international organisations: the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA, part of the UN), the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA, part of the OECD), and Euratom.
This project is a part of the NUCLEARWATERS-project, which tends to rewrite the history of nuclear energy with a focus on water.