Socio-epistemic networks in the history of fusion energy research in Europe

Historians of European integration and nuclear energy have examined fusion research as a site where big science, Cold War politics, and international community-building intersect. Yet, even in this growing literature, the development of cooperation between scientists, administrators, and policy-makers tends to be described qualitatively, and systematic analyses of the social networks underpinning fusion research have not been pursued. Within the project FusEUrope-European cooperation in nuclear fusion research: from history to future policy design, we address this gap by investigating the history of European techno-scientific cooperation in nuclear fusion and its relationship to political integration from the mid-1950s to the early 2000s (https://fuseurope.polito.it/). One objective is to reconstruct longitudinal social networks of actors and institutions, drawing on the socio-epistemic network framework (Lalli et al. 2020, Kaye et al. 2024) Kaye, A., Schlattmann, R., Vogl, M., Buarque, B. S., Schmitz, J., Weiß, L., & von Welczeck, L. (2024). “Socio-Epistemic Networks: A Framework for History of Knowledge.” In History of Intellectual Culture 3/2024, edited by C. A. Lerg, J. Östling, J. Weiß, A. Kwaschik, and C. Roesch. De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111291383-012. Lalli, R., Howey, R., & Wintergrün, D. (2020). “The Socio-Epistemic Networks of General Relativity, 1925–1970.” In The Renaissance of General Relativity in Context, edited by A. S. Blum, R. Lalli, and J. Renn. Einstein Studies. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50754-1_2.