In the first months of my scholarship, I obtained ethical approval from the university’s ethical committee for my project, which included interviews to human participants in a later phase of the project.
- I agreed on a Data Management Plan with the university’s data officers.
- I set up a career development plan with my supervisor.
- I presented my project in an internal seminar at CEHIC, and collected useful insight to be deployed in my research.
- I conducted a literature review on the topics of interest for my project, and to fill the gaps that I had in nuclear history expertise as well as in environmental history and sociology. The literature review was supposed to last about 5 months according to the original Gantt chart, and followed by the study of primary sources in archives in Italy. That turned out not to be the case (see below).
- Starting from March 2020, however, the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemics impeded me to pursue the rest of my plan. Most of the archives I planned to visit are in North Italy: in particular, in the regions of Lombardy (Milan) and Veneto (Verona), where the outbreak was most virulent, and led to the closing down of most public offices. Archives were closed too, until a date to be defined. I could therefore not travel to Italy. Lockdown restrictions in other countries such as the US, the UK and France, where I also planned to conduct archival research, also prevented me from changing my implementation plan and do research in those countries first. I was obliged to stay in Barcelona.
- All conferences I planned to participate were cancelled. The plan I had to organize my own conference on nuclear history also had to be cancelled. As a consequence, I continued my literature review but, lacking primary sources, I could not produce novel research. That ultimately led me to renounce my scholarship, when I realised that the indefinite extension of travel restrictions would not enable me to conclude my project on time.
- Teaching activities were suspended, so I could only briefly participate in teaching by giving a couple of classes on contemporary history of science.
- Lacking other options, and with offices and archives closed, but without knowing how long restrictions would last, the only option I had was to keep up with literature review, take notes to be verified later in archives, and liaise with colleagues in other universities to start planning virtual seminars (which, however, had not taken place by the time I left UAB).
Agreement terminated on 30/09/2020 (see technical report, point 5).
