Mittwoch, 27. Mai 2015, 17:15 - 18:45 iCal

Current Research on the IAEA

Round Table with Maria Rentetzi, Elisabeth Röhrlich and Anna Weichselbraun

UZA II/Rotunde, Seminarraum 2H467
Althanstraße 14 (Eingang Josef-Holaubek-Platz), 1090 Wien

Diskussion, Round Table


Founded in 1957 and headquartered in the then inter-bloc city of Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) dual mission is to spread the civil applications of nuclear technologies while preventing their use for destructive purposes. In the international community, the IAEA’s reports are a matter of war and peace, most recently illustrated by global controversies about nuclear programs (Iraq in 2003, Iran, and North Korea). Apart from the organization’s function as technical arbiter for the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it also plays a major role in supporting nuclear industry, technology, science, and medicine. In both of these roles, the IAEA has been subject to wide-ranging criticism from regulatory capture to pawn of the great powers.

The three presenters explore ways in which the IAEA has acted throughout and been caught within the technopolitical tensions of various historical moments from the organization’s founding to the present. Elisabeth Röhrlich will discuss the political, technical, and institutional difficulties in establishing the IAEA's safeguards system. Anna Weichselbraun will provide an overview of her 12 month ethnographic research among the IAEA’s safeguards inspectors. Focusing on the Vinca experiment, one of the earliest IAEA dosimetry projects, Maria Rentetzi will explore how political cooperation in an international cold war context came to be seen as a precondition for any scientific and technical cooperation in the field of nuclear physics.


Veranstalter

Doktoratskolleg “Naturwissenschaften im historischen, philosophischen und kulturellen Kontext”


Um Anmeldung wird gebeten


Kontakt

Mag. Mag. Mag. Ramon Pils, DipTrans
Institut für Geschichte
01 4277 40872
dksciences.geschichte@univie.ac.at