Battery challenge gaps addressed by humanities and social sciences
Humanities and social sciences are now included in the COMPEL battery initiative. Photo: Getty Images.
The COMPEL battery initiative is a collaboration between academia and industry. Uppsala University is the first university involved in the collaboration to include humanities and social sciences in COMPEL. Mattias Martinson, Deputy Vice-Rector for the Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, tells us more.
Mattias Martinson, Deputy Vice-Rector for the Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences. Photo: Sara Martinson.
How can the humanities and social sciences contribute to battery research?
“Behind the battery technology value chain – development, production, materials issues, multi-purpose use and recycling – there is naturally a wider context. We cannot transform society without social and cultural consequences. Players have to take risks. This is a socio-political responsibility, which brings in issues relating to education, socio-economic strategies, urban planning, law and economics. Uppsala University’s chemists are world leaders in understanding battery chemistry and this is at the heart of UU’s involvement in COMPEL, but that expertise is not enough to meet the battery challenge overall. Therefore, many other fields of technology have been involved and with the addition of humanities and social sciences, COMPEL covers not only the technological dimension but also life and society in general.”
What will the next step be?
“It’s now up to us to formulate research tasks in which technology and the natural sciences are engaged jointly with the humanities and social sciences.”
What might such a project involve?
“Take, for example, the ‘demise’ of the Swedish battery company Northvolt. That could be an interesting case to study in depth from many perspectives. Analysing it technically, economically, and in other respects would require many types of expertise, and it could shed a critical light on various aspects of the Swedish approach to building companies and investing in the industries of the future.”
What challenges arise in an interdisciplinary collaboration?
“It’s not so easy to get people outside academia to understand what the humanities and social sciences have to do with battery research and technology development. But once you make a start, it usually becomes obvious. After all, societal challenges have to do with some of our core fields, such as law, economics, history, education and ethics. What we have to do is create a challenge-driven, multidisciplinary experimental workshop where we can broaden our scope based on our various areas of expertise. We’re good at drawing lines in academia, which makes it all the more difficult to get at the conflicting objectives in the gaps between disciplines. But the challenges we face present opportunities to develop research that also sees the gaps.”
Sigrid Asker