Vincent Lagendijk

 

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Vincent Lagendijk (1980) studied Economic History at Leiden University (1999-2003). He wrote a PhD thesis (2003-2008) at Eindhoven University of Technology, as part of the project Transnational Infrastructures and the Rise of Contemporary Europe. His thesis, Electrifying Europe: The power of Europe in the construction of electricity networks, deals with the historical development of ideas on European unification in correlation to electricity network-building in the period 1918-2005. It provides a better understanding of the notion and concept 'Europe', as used by engineers, politicians, and other actors involved in the building of Europe's electricity supply.

He subsequently was a postdoctoral researcher in the international project The Emergence and Governance of Critical Transnational European Infrastructures (see www.eurocrit.eu). Here he further explored Europe's electricity supply system and its historical configuration, and how the issue of risk was handled in the system-building process, and how recent liberalisation changes have affected the existing safety structures.

Since June 2010 Vincent works at Leiden, working on his project Transnationalizing the TVA: International River Development in Troubled Waters. He will look at the transnational dimensions of the exploitation of international rivers, as inspired by the American Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA, 1933). His research proposal encompasses three cases; the river Mekong, Jordan, and the Danube. This research is made possible through a so-called VENI grant from The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

Vincent is a member of Tensions of Europe, the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), the Dutch N.W. Posthumus Institute, and the Oslo Contemporary International History Network.

Vincent Lagendijk
Leiden University, Institute for History
Johan Huizinga building, room 124a
2311 VL Leiden
The Netherlands
+31(0)71-5271634
v.c.lagendijk@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Skype: vincentlag

 

Publications

 

Books:

Reviews in:

Articles:

  • (with Erik van der Vleuten), ‘Transnational Infrastructure Vulnerability: The Historical Shaping of the 2006 European Blackout’,Energy Policy, under review.
  • (with Erik van der Vleuten), ‘Interpreting Transnational Infrastructure Vulnerability: 4/11 and the Historical Dynamics of Transnational Electricity Governance’, Energy Policy, under review.
  • 'Histoire de l'idée d'un système européen de l'électricité: Projets, progrès et persistances', in: Annales historiques de l'électricité 6 (2008), 57-79.
  • (with Johan Schot), 'Technocratic Internationalism in the Interwar Years: Building Europe on motorways and electricity networks', in: Journal of Modern European History 6:2 (2008), 196-217.
  • (with Erik van der Vleuten), 'Electricity infrastructures', entry for the Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History (edited by Akira Iriye & Pierre-Yves Saunier), (2009).
  • (with Erik van Vleuten, Irene Anastasiadou and Frank Schipper), 'Europe's System Builders: The Contested Shaping of Transnational Road, Electricity and Rail Networks', in: Contemporary European History, 16, 3 (2007), pp.321-347.

 

Book chapters:

 

Conference papers:

  • "Power and Persuasion: American Influences on the Western European Power Pool, 1947-1951", paper presented at “Appropriating America, Making Europe”, Inventing Europe Eurocores European Science Foundation workshop, January 15-17, 2009, Amsterdam.
  • (with Hans Buiter), "Investigating infrastructural interdependencies: The construction of a database on European infrastructure in the 19th and 20th century", paper presented at the SHOT Annual Conference 2007, Lisbon (Portugal), October 2008.
  • (with Alexander Badenoch), "Myths of Kaprun: Material vision of Europe", Paper presented at Academic conference on European Identity 1939-c.1970: the Impact of the Second World War, Amsterdam, December 2007, and the SHOT Annual Conference 2007, Washington D.C. (USA), October 2007.
  • "A network of power? The European electrical industry and the grid for the United States of Europe, 1929-1937", Paper presented at the European Business History Association, September 2007, Geneva, Switzerland.
  • (with Frank Schipper) “European road and electricity networks in the 20th century: Imagination, contestation, realization” , Paper presented at the NW Posthumus Ph.D. candidate conference, Amsterdam, 12 May 2006.
  • (with Frank Schipper) “Seducing the apostate state: Road and electricity networks in Yugoslavia, 1948-1980”, Paper presented at the TIE-Workshop, Eindhoven/Rolduc, April 2006, and at a masterclass with John Krige, Eindhoven, 19 June 2006.
  • 'High voltages, low tensions. The interconnections of Eastern and Western European electricity grids during the Cold War'. SHOT Annual Conference 2005, Minneapolis (USA), 3-6 November 2005. (350.61 kB)

Reports: