At Greifswald Högselius set out to write – in German – a master thesis on the history and politics of nuclear power in East Germany. The work on this thesis, which was later turned into a book published by Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, entitled Die deutsch-deutsche Geschichte des Kernkraftwerkes Greifswald: Atomenergie zwischen Ost und West (The "German-German" history of the Greifswald nuclear power plant: Atomic energy between East and West), convinced him that an academic research career in the field of history of science and technology was the right thing for him.
In 1999 Högselius was enrolled as a doctoral student at the Department of Technology and Social Change at Linköping University, from where he in 2003 moved, along with his academic supervisor, Professor Charles Edquist, to Lund University in the very south of Sweden. A year later his doctoral thesis was completed and defended, entitled The Dynamics of Innovation in Eastern Europe (published as a book by Edwar Elgar in the UK and USA in 2005). It dealt with the making of telecommunications systems in the Baltic Sea region, with particular emphasis on the sociotechnical relations between the Baltic and Nordic countries before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
As a postdoctoral researcher Högselius returned to the technopolitics of energy in historical perspective. He joined forces with infrastructural historian Arne Kaijser at the Royal Institute of Technology, with whom he wrote his next book, När folkhemselen blev internationell: Elavregleringen i historiskt perspektiv (The internationalization of electricity: deregulation in historical perspective), published by SNS Förlag in 2007. This much-cited book scrutinized the domestic and European political decision-making processes from the 1970s to the 1990s that ultimately led up to the full liberalization of the Swedish electricity market in 1996. At the same time Högselius and Kaijser embarked on a major international study addressing the politics of spent nuclear fuel in historical perspective, a project that included interview and archive trips to Finland, Germany, Russia and Japan and eventually resulted in several journal articles and reports.
In 2007 Högselius and Kaijser initiated a cooperation with seven research groups from Finland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Greece, with whom they landed a major four-year EUROCORES research grant. Kaijser was appointed project leader for the overall project, entitled "Europe Goes Critical: The Emergence and Governance of Critical Transnational Infrastructures", whereas Högselius took charge of an individual project, "Natural Gas: Trusting the Enemy", focusing on the historical origins of Russia’s natural gas exports to Western Europe. The individual project is currently about to be completed, the main outcome taking the form of a major monograph, whereas the overall project will result in an edited volume, currently under review for MIT Press (as part of its Inside Technology series), with Högselius as one of four editors.
In 2009 Högselius was appointed Associate Professor in History of Science and Technology. At the same time he was awarded a major individual research grant by the Swedish research council Formas for further research on the politics of risk, infrastructure and environment in historical perspective. Another grant was awarded to Högselius and Kaijser in 2010 for their new book project, "From Nature to Networks: The Infrastructural Transformation of Europe, 1850-2000", with Erik van der Vleuten of Eindhoven University of Technology as third author. This project is part of a planned book series, "Making Europe: Technology and Transformations, 1850-2000", with Johan Schot and Phil Scranton as series editors and Palgrave Macmillan as contracted publisher.
Apart from his academic activities, Högselius is since 2003 a regular contributor to the leading Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet as well as to more specialized magazines, driven by a desire to make academic research available to a wider public. In 2007, he published a major and widely acclaimed non-academic monograph, Östersjövägar (Baltic Sea Paths), on transnational connections in space and time between places and cultures in the Baltic Sea region. Internationally, Högselius has worked as an external expert for organizations such as the OECD, PHARE and the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS).
Per Högselius has a Swedish-language blog at perhogselius.wordpress.com.
