Melina Antonia Buns
Associate Professor
Contact
Telephone: 51832068
Email: melina.a.buns@uis.no
Room: HG O-232
Department
Faculty of Arts and Education
Department of Cultural Studies and Languages
About me
Melina Antonia Buns (she/her) is Associate Professor of History at the University of Stavanger and is part of the Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities.
My research lies at the intersection of environmental, energy, and international history. In my previous research, I have in particular focused on the Nordic region, environmental politics, and international organisations. Moving into the field of energy and nuclear humanities, I am more and more interested in materials and (in-between) places.
In my current research I explore the history of nuclear waste, in particular its international and environmental dimensions.
Furthermore, I am writing a book on Nordic cooperation in international environmental politics, that is based on my thesis (University of Oslo, 2021), in which I explore the dynamics and motives of the allegedly green Nordics. A part of this thesis has been published in my article ‘Making a Model’ in which I explore the history of the Nordic Environmental Protection Convention and argue that by aiming at creating a blueprint for environmental conventions the Nordic countries hoped to establish transnational responsibilities and accountabilities. These legal agreements were also essential for the performance of the Nordics’ ‘green modernity’ as Dominic Hinde and I have argued in our piece ‘Green States in a Dirty World’. I have talked about this research in a nordics.info-podcast on 'Nordic Cooperation: Self-Interest or Altruism?'.
Over the past years, I have spent time at the Centre for Environmental Humanities at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom, the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, Germany.
Since 2023, I am the Research Event Coordinator of the Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities and responsible for the research talk series, the work-in-progress seminars, and reading meetings. Feel free to reach out.
I am member of the European Society for Environmental History 2025 Conference Organising Committee. For updates on the ESEH 2025 Conference ‘Climate Histories’, visit the conference website.
From 2024-2028, I am member of the Young Academy of Norway. You can read more about this on my AYF profile or in this short news article.
Projects
I lead the international research project Energy Lives! Infrastructural Citizenship in Nordic Energy Transitions, funded by NordForsk, Nordic Energy Research, project number 181638. Running from 2024 to 2028, the research team with scholars from the University of Stavanger, Chalmers University of Technology, and Aarhus University approaches energy transitions and citizens by focusing on lived experiences, politics, and infrastructures and explores how historical processes and decisions continue to shape contemporary debates.
My own research as part of this project studies the afterlives of energy transitions, i.e. spaces of nuclear production and nuclear disposal.
Read more about Energy Lives! on the project website.
The project team blogs on The Current which you can read here.
I have previously won a Three-year Researcher Project with International Mobility grant from the Research Council of Norway with the project Nuclear Nordics: Radioactive Waste Spatialities, Materialities and Societies in the Nordic Region, 1960s to 1990s, project number 324293. A result of this grant is the chapter ‘Explosive Waste: Scandinavian Anti-Nuclear Movements' Campaign against the Reprocessing of Spent Nuclear Fuel’ in which I analyse Scandinavian civil society engagement with reprocessing as an issue of environmental and nuclear disarmament policies.
I am part of the Research Collective Ghosts of Empire in the North Sea that aims to shed light on the imperial logics embedded in extractive activities in the North Sea. Read more about the research collective on its website. Feel free to get in touch if you want to be involved.
Together with Charlotte Wrigley, Finn Arne Jørgensen and Allen Jones I run the FUI-group CREATURE (Creative Research and Teaching in Radical Environments) that aims to move humanities research and teaching into uncommon settings and spaces, and to rethink methods of learning, research, and dissemination beyond the written word. More information about CREATURE and upcoming events can be found here.
Teaching
In the spring of 2025, I am responsible for the undergraduate level course ‘Half-Baked Histories: An Introduction to Food History’ and I co-teach in the MA-level course ‘Environmental History: Working with Historiography’.
At the University of Stavanger, I have taught in a range of courses, including:
HIS185 Innføring i historie: Teknologiens kulturhistorie [Introduction to History: The Cultural History of Technology]
HIS175 Hva er historie? Om historiografi, historisk teori, metode og historiedidaktikk [What is History?: On Historiography, Historical Theory, Method and History Didactics]
MHI336 Environmental History: Working with Historiography
At the University of Oslo, I have previously taught undergraduate courses on the history of consumption and on environmental history as well as in MA-level courses on transnational and international history in the MITRA-programme.
I have guest taught in the course SV100 Bærekraft og grønn omstilling [Sustainability and Green Transition] at the University of Stavanger, the Bærekraftlaboratoriet at the University of Oslo, and the course AK1202 ‘Teknik- och vetenskapshistoria’ [History of Science and Technology] at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.
From 1-5 December 2025, I organise a PhD Course in Energy Humanities at the University of Stavanger. Read more about the course and how to apply here.
NB! Please do not try to reach me on the telephone. Write an email to melina.a.buns@uis.no instead and I will respond as soon as possible.
Office hours upon appointment.
Profile last updated: April 2025