Mats Fridlund, University of Aarhus and University of Copenhagen
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation,
Common to the first wave of terrorism that emerged in the 19th century were the prevalence of participants with advanced scientific expertise and the appropriation of chemically related science and technologies such as dynamite, revolvers, clandestine printing presses, and the illustrated mass press. This talk addresses the role of these technologies in shaping or even allowing this new terrorism to emerge and whether--then as well as today--access and expertise can be seen as playing a defining role in the emergence of new forms of terrorism.
Mats Fridlund is a visiting associate professor of history of ideas at the University of Aarhus and researcher of materiality studies and history of terrorism at the University of Copenhagen. He has published on the history of technological nationalism, the history and culture of engineering, the development of electric power, and telecommunications technologies in the 20th century. His current research concerns the history of the technologies of terrorism from the 19th to the 21st centuries.