Postdoctoral Researcher
Fields of Expertise
Biography
Vincent Lagendijk currently works on a project entitled Transnationalizing the TVA: International River Development in Troubled Waters, which deals with the transnational dimensions of the exploiting international rivers inspired by the American example of the Tennessee Valley Authority (1933). Three rivers are studied; the Mekong, the Jordan, and the Danube. This research is financed through a so-called Veni scheme of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).
Vincent studied Economic History at Leiden University (1999-2003), and subsequently was a PhD candidate at Eindhoven University of Technology (2003-2008). His PhD thesis, Electrifying Europe, deals with the historical development of ideas on European unification in correlation ot electricty network-building in the period 1918-2005. It provides a better understanding of the notion of 'Europe' as conceived 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. Before joining the history department at Maastricht, Vincent was a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University (2010-2012).
Bibliography
Books
Electrifying Europe: The Power of Europe in the Construction of Electricity Networks, PhD diss. Eindhoven Universty of Technology (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2008). Free PDF.
Articles
“Divided Development: Post-War Ideas on River Utilization and Their Influence on the Development of the Danube.” The International History Review (forthcoming 2014).
“'To Consolidate Peace'? The International Electro-Technical Community and the Grid for the United States of Europe.” Journal of Contemporary History, 47:2 (2012).
“'An Experience Forgotten Today': Examining Two Rounds of European Electricity Liberalization,” History and Technology 27, no. 3 (September 2011): 291-310.
(with Erik van der Vleuten), “Transnational Infrastructure Vulnerability: The Historical Shaping of the 2006 European Blackout.” Energy Policy, 38:4 (2010), 2042-2052.
(with Erik van der Vleuten), “Interpreting Transnational Infrastructure Vulnerability: 4/11 and the Historical Dynamics of Transnational Electricity Governance.” Energy Policy, 38:4 (2010), 2053-2062.
“L'histoire de l'idée d'un système européen de l'électricité: projet, progrès, persistance”, 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 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), 321-347.
Chapters
(with Geert Verbong), “Setting the Stage for the Energy Transition,” in Governing the Energy Transition, ed. Geert Verbong and Derk Loorbach, Routledge Studies in Sustainability Transitions (London: Routledge, 2012).
(with Frank Schipper & Irene Anastasiadou), “New connections for an Old Continent: Rail, road and electricity in the League of Nations' Organisation for Communications and Transit”, in: Alexander Badenoch & Andreas Fickers (eds.), Europe Materializing? Transnational Infrastructures and the Project of Europe (Houndsmill: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010).
(with Erik van der Vleuten), “Electricity infrastructures”, entry in Akira Iriye & Pierre-Yves Saunier (eds.) Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History (Houndsmill: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 315-318.
“High voltages, Lower Tensions: The Interconnections of Eastern and Western European Electricity Networks in the 1970s and 1980s”, in: Éric Bussière, Michel Dumoulin & Sylvian Schirmann (eds.) Milieux économiques et intégration européenne au XXe siècle. La crise des années 1970 de la conférence de La Haye à la veille de la relance des années 1980, Euroclio: Etudes et Documents series, vol. 35, (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2006), 137-165.