Research projects
The mining history group at Uppsala University aims to apply new perspectives on historical mining and metal making, drawing together for example environmental history, transnational history, administrative history, and the history of knowledge. Below, you find descriptions of our major research grants, containing more details about our previous and on-going research.
The Administrative Life of Environmental Problems: Governing Material Flows in the Swedish Metal Industry 1750–1900
Funding: Swedish Research Council
Duration: 2026–2029 (ongoing)
This project examines environmental problems in Swedish mining and metal production 1750–1900. Drawing on perspectives from environmental history, histories of bureaucracy as knowledge, and economic history, it analyses how concerns about resource scarcity, landscape degradation, pollution, and health risks circulated between local worksites, regional supervisors, and the central authorities Bergskollegium, Vetenskapsakademien, and Jernkontoret. By studying how these institutions translated everyday observations into rules, standards, and visions of improvement, the project aims to understand how environmental problems were negotiated, codified, and made actionable across state administration, private stakeholders, and scientific communities during early industrialisation.The research combines agile digitisation with qualitative analysis to explore a large corpus of handwritten minutes, correspondence, and reports. This mixed method enables both systematic detection of long‑term patterns and close reconstruction of debates and decisions. By reframing industrialisation as an administrative process rooted in environmental problem‑solving, the project offers new insights into the relationships between natural resources, technological change, and governance. It provides historically grounded perspectives relevant to current debates on sustainability and the green transition.
Mapping the geographies of early modern mining knowledge. A digital history of the study tours of the Swedish Bureau of Mines, 1691–1826
Funding: Swedish Research Council
Duration: 2022–2026 (finished)
Early modern mines were like subterranean roots from which fiscal-military states drew military, economic, and scientific power. To improve this vital trade, fledgling European mining administrations encouraged travelling officials to tour foreign territories to collect new useful knowledge. This three-year collaborative project between researchers at Uppsala and Stockholm University uses state-of-the-art digital methods to explore the collection of foreign knowledge of the Swedish Bureau of Mines through their system of study tours.
For over 100 years – from the late seventeenth century until the early 1800s – the Bureau encouraged its officials to travel across Europe and beyond. They meticulously documented these voyages, and over time produced numerous handwritten travelogues, which are preserved to this day in the Swedish National Archives. Through, e.g., Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR), and Deep Mapping, we will turn the Bureau’s archive into an enriched dataset suitable for mapping the geographies of early modern mining knowledge, and understanding the practices of the travelling mining officials. Using this data, we will carry out a detailed, yet long-term, analysis of the circulation of mining knowledge. Consequently, the project will provide new insights of how digital methods can be integrated in historical analysis, while also improving our understanding of the rise of modern science, state-making, and industrialisation.
The project leader was Jacob Orrje, Department of Science and History of Ideas, Uppsala University. Researchers in the project were also Måns Jansson (Department of Economic History, Uppsala University), and Olof Karsvall (Swedish National Archives / Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University).