Óðinn Melsted
Assistant Professor
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Location: Maastricht University
About me
Óðinn Melsted is an Austrian-Icelandic historian and Assistant Professor at Maastricht University.
He studied history at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík and obtained his doctorate from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, with a dissertation on “Icelandic Energy Regimes: Fossil Fuels, Renewables and the Making of a Low-Carbon Energy Balance, 1940-1980”. Since 2020, he has worked in the NWO-funded project “Managing Scarcity and Sustainability” on the oil industry and its ties with environmentalism and alternative energy during the 1970s at Maastricht University. His general research interests lie in the transnational histories of energy, technology, and environment in the 20th century, particularly historical energy transitions, the use of geothermal energy, and the relationship of sustainability challenges with socio-technical change.
As an external collaborator in the Energy Lives! project, he will study Nordic energy and infrastructure transitions with a special emphasis on district heating.