Eike-Christian Heine

About me

I study how technology shapes history, with a focus on modern and contemporary technological cultures and their intersections with environmental history and the history of science. My research examines how technological infrastructures and their construction shaped labour, scientific knowledge production, and landscapes; how technologies such as photography and aircraft shaped archaeological fieldwork in colonial contexts; and how technologies enabled the exploration of extreme natural environments – particularly submarine environments – and how, in both research practice and popular imagination, technology and nature were co‑constructed in those settings.

My research

I joined the Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities and the University of Stavanger in November 2024. Here, am a postdoc in the Pitch Project and analyze the role of Petroculture in the exhibition practices of European technology museums and industrial heritage sites. Together with curator Dr. Nora Thora, I am also curating a museal intervention at the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin to critically examine the historical role of technology in our contemporary fossil culture.

Currently, I am developing two new research projects. The first explores underwater spaces as sites of labour. The project is a deep dive into the practices and imaginations that shaped the underwater workplace since the latter half of the twentieth century. The second is called Remembering Rain and recognizes that rainfall – a universal anthropological experience – is being altered by climate change. At the intersection of environmental history, the history of science and technology, and heritage studies, it raises the question of how we can remember rain in the future to better live with the unfolding climate crisis.

Monographs 

• Vom großen Graben. Die Geschichte des Nord-Ostsee-Kanals. Berlin: Kadmos 2015. (Dissertation)
• with Matthias Dudde: Volkswagen Financial Services AG. Bank, leasing, insurance. A chronicle of 60 years of Financial Services. Wolfsburg: Volkswagen 2009 (in German: Volkswagen Financial Services AG. 60 Jahre Bank, Leasing, Versicherung – eine Chronik).

Edited Volumes & Special Issues

• Submerged: Diving and the undersea in environmental history, Special Issue of the Journal for the History of Environment and Society JHES 9 (2024).
• with Martin Meiske (ed.): Beyond the Lab and the Field. Infrastructures as Places of Knowledge Production. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 2022.
• with Christoph Rauhut (ed.): Producing non-simultaneity. Construction sites as places of progressiveness and continuity. London: Routledge 2018.
• Technik, Techniker und Verantwortung. Special Issue of the journalTechnikgeschichte 83 (2016), 4.
• Under construction. Construction sites: Building the material and the imagined world. Berlin: LIT 2016.

Peer Reviewed Articles & Book Chapters

• “Introduction: History from Underneath the Surface. Diving and submarine environments since the nineteenth century.” In: Journal for the History of Environment and SocietyJHES 9 (2024), p. 13–45.
• “The challenge of Cousteau. Honor Frost’s and Hans Fricke’s approaches to the undersea environment in archaeology, biology, and documentary film (1950s-1970s).” In: Journal for the History of Environment and Society JHES 9 (2024), p. 119–147.
• with Martin Meiske: “Scientific Bonanzas. Infrastructures as Places of Knowledge Production.” In: Eike-Christian Heine, Martin Meiske (ed.): Beyond the Lab and the Field. Infrastructures as Places of Knowledge Production. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 2022, 3–20.
• “Autobahn and archaeology. Intersections of infrastructure, knowledge and ideology in the Third Reich.” In: Eike-Christian Heine, Martin Meiske (ed.): Beyond the Lab and the Field. Infrastructures as Places of Knowledge Production. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 2022, 101–121.
• “Forschen in einer extremen Umwelt. Praktiken unterwasserarchäologischer Feldforschung am Kap Gelidonya (1958–1961).” In: NTM – Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin 29 (2021), 171–202.
• with Christian Zumbrägel: “Technikgeschichte,” Version: 1.0, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 20.12.2018, http://docupedia.de/zg/Heine_zumbraegel_technikgeschichte_v1_de_2018.
• “Die technisierten Körper der Erdarbeiter um 1900.” In: Body Politics 6 (2018), 323–352.
• “Two canals, two barrages and the remnants of a river. Nature and technology along the Eider, Schleswig-Holstein's longest river.” In: Environment and History 23 (2017), 253–283.
• “Jenseits von Kultur und Zivilisation. Vereinzelte moralische Ansprüche an Technik und Techniker im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts.” In: Technikgeschichte 83 (2016) 4, 265–286.
• “Connect and Divide. On the history of the Kiel Canal.” In: Journal of Transport History 35 (2014), 200–219.
• “Die aufsässigen Elemente. Herausforderungen, Technik und Arbeiter beim Bau des Nord-Ostsee-Kanals.” In: Technikgeschichte 81 (2014), 305–334.

Articles & Book chapters (incomplete)

• “’To its total lack of respect for all things majestic.’ Menschen, Maschinen und Moral in Ian M. Banks Culture-Reihe.“ In: Stefan Zahlmann (ed.): Medien des Phantastischen (Spur der Steine, Vol. 4, ed. by Stefan Zahlmann). Wien: Bibliothek der Provinz 2021, 105–124.
• with Christian Kehrt: “Natur.” In: Martina Heßler, Kevin Liggieri (ed.): Handbuch zur Historischen Technikanthropologie. Baden-Baden: Nomos 2020, 231–235.
• with Thomas Schuetz: “Das Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges vor hundert Jahren - Technikhistorische Folgen.” In: Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin. Zeitschrift der Stiftung Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin und der Freunde und Förderer des DTMB (58) 2018, 4–9.
• “Einleitung: Technik, Techniker und Verantwortung im 20. Jahrhundert in Deutschland. Plädoyer für eine Begriffsgeschichte.” In: Technikgeschichte 83 (2016) 4, 253–264.
• with Sonja Petersen & Thomas Schuetz: “Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Technik - Technikhistorische Perspektiven.” In: Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin. Zeitschrift der Stiftung Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin und der Freunde und Förderer des DTMB e.V. 53 (2014), 4–9.
• with Bernadette Descharmes, Stefanie Mamsch & Philippa Söldenwagner: “Gefroren wird immer. Eine kleine Kulturgeschichte des Frierens von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit.” In: Christian Frey et. al. (ed.): Sinngeschichten. Kulturgeschichtliche Beiträge für Ute Daniel. Köln et. al.: Böhlau 2013, 103–117.

Academic background

I studied political science, modern history and philosophy at the Technical University of Braunschweig, where I also completed my PhD in history (defended 2013; published 2015: Das große Graben. Die Geschichte des Nord-Ostsee-Kanals, Kadmos). Before undertaking my doctorate, I worked briefly as a business historian on a research project about Volkswagen’s business history. After completing my PhD I held postdoctoral positions at the Technical University of Braunschweig, the University of Stuttgart and the University of the Bundeswehr in Munich. I received a two-year research fellowship from the Gerda Henkel Foundation and was Scholar in Residence at the Research Institute of the Deutsches Museum in Munich for six months. I received travel grants from Stanford’s Hoover Institution, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Max Weber Foundation. I am the founder and principal investigator of the research network Modern Expeditions, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for 2021-2025. I also once did a podcast.