Odinn Melsted is the recipient of a DOC Fellowship of the Austrian Academy of the Sciences at the Institute of History and European Ethnology, University of Innsbruck. Having studied History and European Studies at the University of Iceland, he is currently working on his PhD project on the changes in Iceland’s energy system since the 1940s, when oil, geothermal energy and hydropower became the main sources of energy. He is the author of Með nótur í farteskinu, which tells the history of foreign musicians in Iceland (Sögufélag, 2016), and co-edited the manuscripts of Anglo-Danish adventurer Jörgen Jörgensen, who took up the reins of government during the Icelandic Revolution of 1809 (University of Iceland Press, 2016).

Irene Pallua is a PhD candidate at the Institute of History and European Ethnology of the University of Innsbruck. Having studied communications science, political science and social ecology at the University of Vienna and the Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt, she joined the University of Innsbruck in 2015. Currently, she is working on her PhD project on the history of the Swiss heating sector from 1950 to 2000, focusing on persistence and change of heating practices. Her main research interest is the history of energy at the intersection of technology, society and environment.