Dr Mats Fridlund examines the power of terrorizing things and the containment of our emotions from the 19th century to the present day.
The humanities have an especially important role in providing critical investigation of the history and cultural impact of terrorism. Dr Fridlund’s project aims to provide an example of how historians can write histories of terrorism that provide a history of how civilians, cities and countries have learned how to live with a constant threat of terror.

In this talk he will examine how terror is incorporated into the everyday lives of citizens in the past and present day, and how coping mechanisms for this can take the form of technological artefacts like hardened buildings, gas masks, duck-and-cover drills, and routine public announcements not to leave luggage unattended.

Doors open at 18:30.

Dr Mats Fridlund studies the political and cultural history of science, technology and innovation, and is currently Associate Professor in the History of Industrialization at Aalto University, Finland. He is currently working on the project “Infernal Machines: A Global History of the Science and Technology of Terrorism, 1793-2010”, which focuses on the role of scientific and technological expertise, innovation, and appropriation in the emergence of terrorism, and is built around a number of historical and contemporary case studies.