Great Acceleration Observatory

Chemical industries play a major, yet in technology studies still underestimated role in the establishment of the technosphere and for the course of history in the Anthropocene. Artificial  fertilizers, ammunition, plastics, fuels, pharmaceuticals are drivers for paradigmatic Anthropocene dynamics in all spheres of the Earth- and socio-technical systems. (Great Acceleration Observatory). Via their industrial technicality, a large set of molecules need to be addresses as part of the technosphere. It is the ongoing „transformation of chemistry“ towards sustainable process structures, that calls for an understanding of the full scope of industrial chemicals for the actual historical condition.  more

How did a state shift in planetary conditions occur in the wake of local transformations and how does that state shift feed back to such localities, further spurring their transformations? Can we map, and thereby discern, the systemic drivers and their mutual interdependencies that mesh the global fabric of the Anthropocene? In the collaborative project Teleconnections we seek to develop a new visual grammar representing social, technological, and ecological transformations across space and time, helping to get an evolving technosphere into view. more

By analyzing existing publications from the last three decades with methods from the framework of socio-epistemic networks, the project aims at uncovering the historical roots of the emergent science of Geoanthropology. more

Deep-learning-driven large scale information extraction from historical maps and high resolution aerial images more

The dissertation project explores the socio-ecological dynamics that contributed to the emergence of the technosphere, using the example of Western Kansas’ groundwater irrigation crisis. The project analyzes the physical, technological, and societal rebirth of Western Kansas at the inflection point of the Great Acceleration, following the extreme events of the 1930s and 1950s Dust Bowls. It examines the emergence and transformation of the cultural, economic, legal, and technological drivers that enabled this socio-ecological transformation. In this way, the geoanthropological study raises the question of whether the same drivers that enabled this transformation are now trapping Kansas in its technospheric present. more