Dr. Davide Orsini

Davide Orsini holds a PhD in anthropology and history and a certificate in science, technology, and society (STS) from the University of Michigan. He is an anthropologist and historian of science and technology studying the social, political, and ecological implications of nuclear power applications after WWII. Davide joined the Rachel Carson Center as a Change! Fellow and Principal Investigator of a five year research grant titled “(Dis)Empowered Communities: A Comparative Study of Decommissioning Nuclear Sites.” The project sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation will investigate the socioecological and economic implications of nuclear decommissioning sites in Italy, Germany, Belgium, and the United States. Davide was a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in the years 2021–23 and a Zurich-Munich Fellow in 2024. Before returning to the EU in 2021, he held the position of assistant professor in the History Department at Mississippi State University (USA), where he taught history of technology, European history, and STS courses.

RCC Research Project

(Dis)Empowered Communities: A Comparative Study of Decommissioning Nuclear Sites

Selected Publications

• “The Nuclear Anthropocene and the Myth of Containment in the US.” USAbroad—Journal of American History and Politics 7 (2024): 73–81.
• The Atomic Archipelago: US Nuclear Submarines and Technopolitics of Risk in Cold War Italy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022.
• “Signs of Risk: Materiality, History, and Meaning in Cold War Controversies over Nuclear Contamination.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 63, no. 3 (July 2020): 520–550.
• “Taking Samples: An Envirotechnical Account of Radioecology in Cold War Italy.” Special issue, Annali Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico | Italienisch-Deutsches Historisches Institut ISIG/FBK 2, (2020): 153–180.
• “L’eredità di Carlo Poni ed i Punti di Contatto fra Microstoria e Science and Technology Studies (STS).” Quaderni Storici 161, no. 2 (2020): 20–29.
• “Experts at Risk: Nuclear Expertise, Military Secrets, and Radioecology in the Early 1970s around the US Navy Base of La Maddalena, Italy.” in Nuclear Portraits, edited by Laurel MacDowell, 94–120. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017.