Legitimizing Ess ― Big Science As a Collaboration Across Boundaries

"Big Science" is a broad epithet that can be associated with research projects that involve huge budgets, big facilities, complex instrumentation, years of planning, and large multidisciplinary teams of researchers. Legitimizing the ESS examines the complexity of the cultural, social, and political processes from which and in which Big Science develops by focusing on the planning and development of the European Spallation Source, ESS, that is to be located in Lund in southern Sweden. Together, the chapters represent a variety of perspectives to highlight the complexity of the processes that are integral to Big Science. Thus, this volume examines the very different roles Big Science may be given in different contexts: locally, regionally, nationally, internationally, as well as historically.

Thomas Kaiserfeld is a professor of history of ideas and sciences at Lund University after having been a professor of history of science and technology at KTH, Stockholm. His research focus is longer historical perspectives such as the founding of different organizations over the past three to four centuries for the transfer of knowledge and research result to users. Tom O’Dell is a professor of ethnology in the department of arts and cultural sciences at Lund University. His research has primarily focused on two areas of study: mobility and the cultural economy. He has often united these two areas of interest through the study of tourism and leisure practices.