Selected Publications
- Tschernobylkinder. Die transnationale Geschichte einer nuklearen Katastrophe. Reihe Umwelt und Gesellschaft Bd. 21, Göttingen 2020.
- Tschernobyl. Auswirkungen des Reaktorunfalls auf die Bundesrepublik und die DDR, Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen, Erfurt 2011 (gleichzeitig: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Berlin; 2012, 3. überarb. Auflage; auch in Russisch und als E-Book erhältlich).
- zus. mit Laurent Coumel: „A Green End for the Red Empire? Ecological Debates and Regional Protests in the Soviet Union and its Successor States, 1950–2000: a Decentralized Approach“, special issue Ab Imperio (2019) 1.
- Umweltgeschichte, überarbeitete, erweiterte Version 3.0, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 10.11.2015, online: http://docupedia.de/zg/Umweltgeschichte_Version_3.0_Melanie_Arndt?oldid=108507
- Gesundheitspolitik im geteilten Berlin 1948–1961, Reihe Zeithistorische Studien Bd. 43, Köln/Weimar/Wien 2009.
FRIAS Project
Fired Up: The Unintended Consequences of Energy Resilience
In my project, I examine the social and environmental changes brought about by central heating in three European cities (Vienna, Stockholm, St. Petersburg) within the context of state-controlled welfare and increasing prosperity, on the one hand, and energy security and the often unintended, long-term consequences for the environment, on the other hand. Resilience, understood as the capacity to deal with change, is key to understanding the tension between flexibility and stability in the development and perception of central heating. Central heating was far more than a purely technological invention of late industrialization that supplied heat to several rooms, entire residential units or even entire districts more cheaply and effectively than ever before. It was more than just an infrastructure in the sense of a built network that allows substances to circulate according to fixed rules. Focusing on the infrastructure of warmth allows to link the material world – both natural and technical –with the social and the emotional. The heating pipes not only provided ‘thermal’ but also ‘social’ warmth, social practices and values, which were in turn often connected with even greater energy and resource consumption. The municipal and state provision of heated private and public spaces increased the demands and expectations of the population for resilient, stable heating systems. However, the consumers also developed their own forms of resilience during times of disturbances in the heat supply. From an environmental history perspective I hope to enrich the discussions on Resilience by highlighting the temporal dimensions of current discussions and nature’s still often overlooked part in history.