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People

Helge Wendt

Research Scholar (Oct 2017-Jun 2024)

Dr.

My main research interest is history of globalization. I received my PhD from the University of Mannheim in 2009 with a transnational, trans-confessional, and diachronic study on Christian colonial mission enterprises in different parts of the world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I considered, from a cultural history perspective, how missionaries conceived a social and territorial order in different colonial contexts. The role and the future of historiography of Europe in a context of globalized historiographical discourse is one important aspect of my research: in publications I continue to elaborate my ideas to reassess local and interlocal histories in a globalized world. One of my MPIWG projects is "Convivencia. From Iberian to Global Dynamics (500–1750)," where I investigate encounters between members of indigenous communities and Catholic missionaries. 

My main research project is on mineral coal and the transformation of energy systems. I study changes in knowledge, politics, economy, and society during the period between 1700 and 1920. Coal is the main agent of energy and resource transformations in the industrialization process and shaped patterns of energy provision and consumption for the past 300 years—this is why I explore how coal mining and the use of coal developed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

 

Projects

IV. Anthropocene Formations

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Material Practices: The Anthropocene Earth in Formation

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Mineral Coal and the Transformation of Energy Systems

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Convivencia. Iberian to Global Dynamics (500–1750)

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The Finale of Antiquity: The Analytic Turn of Mechanics between Traditional Models of Thought and Claims of Autonomy

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Selected Publications

Wendt, Helge (2023). “Stoffgeschichte und Diversifizierung: Kohle als Brennstoff, Abfall und Stofflieferant (1550-1950).” In Perspektiven auf Stoffgeschichte: Materialität, Praktiken, Wissen, ed. S. Haumann, E.-M. Roelevink, N. Thorade, and C…

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Wendt, Helge (2023). “Review of: Thiel, Ulrich: Die Bergakademie Freiberg und das koloniale Montanwesen: eine Studie über den Einsatz von Absolventen einer deutschen Hochschule in Kolonien vom Beginn des Lehrbetriebes 1766 bis zum Ausbruch des…

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Wendt, Helge (2023). “Review of: Turner, David M. and Daniel Blackie: Disability in the Industrial Revolution: Physical Impairment in British Coalmining, 1780–1880. Manchester: Manchester University Press 2018.” The Journal of Modern History 95 (1):…

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Wendt, Helge (2023). “Kohlebäume: Darstellungen von Industrie und Wissenschaft in politischen Dimensionen (1900–1945).” Themenportal Europäische Geschichte, February 2023. https://www.europa.clio-online.de/essay/id/fdae-117896.

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Renn, Jürgen, Manfred Dietrich Laubichler, and Helge Wendt (2015). “Energietransformationen zwischen Kaffee und Koevolution.” In Willkommen im Anthropozän : unsere Verantwortung für die Zukunft der Erde ; Katalog zur Sonderausstellung am Deutschen Museum, ed. N. Möllers, C. Schwägerl, and H. Trischler, 79–82. Munich: Deutsches Museum.

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Wendt, Helge (2014). “Scientific cooperation between the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin (DAW) and Cuba in the 1960s and 1970s.” In The history of physics in Cuba, ed. A. Baracca, J. Renn, and H. Wendt, 387–393. Dordrecht: Springer.

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Wendt, Helge (2012). “Interkulturelle Essensgeschichte am Beispiel zweier deutschsprachiger Jesuitenmissionare in Südamerika (18. Jahrhundert).” Zeitsprünge : Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit 16 (3/4): 198–224.

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Wendt, Helge (2011). “Mission transnational, trans-kolonial, global. Perspektivverschiebungen in der Missionsgeschichtsschreibung,.” 2011.

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Wendt, Helge (2012). “Interkulturelle Essensgeschichte am Beispiel zweier deutschsprachiger Jesuitenmissionare in Südamerika (18. Jahrhundert).” Zeitsprünge : Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit 16 (3/4): 198–224.

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Wendt, Helge (2012). “Migration in Missionen : drei Fallbeispiele räumlicher und sozialer Mobilität im 19. Jahrhundert.” In Migration und Reisen : Mobilität in der Neuzeit, ed. E. Taddei, M. Müller, and R. Rebitsch, 283–294. Innsbruck [u.a.]: Studien Verlag.

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Wendt, Helge (2013). “The Lettres édifiantes et curieuses : the politics of history in different nineteenth-century editions.” In Missions and Media : the politics of missionary periodicals in the long nineteenth century, ed. F. Jensz and H. Acke, 97–112. Stuttgart: Steiner.

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Wendt, Helge (2012). “Moralisches Wissen : der Umgang mit der Frage der Ehe in unterschiedlichen Missionskontexten im 19. Jahrhundert.” In Missionsgeschichte als Geschichte der Globalisierung von Wissen : transkulturelle Wissensaneignung und -vermittlung durch christliche Missionare in Afrika und Asien im 17., 18. und 19. Jahrhundert, ed. U. van der Heyden and A. Feldtkeller, 429–440. Stuttgart: Steiner.

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Past Events

Workshop

Experts, Expertise and Energy Transition between Germany and Chile

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Workshop

Natural Resources in Early Modern Economies of Knowledge

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Conference

Alexander von Humboldt: Circulation of State Knowledge in Europe and Latin America

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Workshop

Kohletag: A Multi-Disciplinary Workshop on the Past, Present, and Future of Coal Use in Germany and Beyond

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Premodern Conversations Series

Coal in the Early Modern History of Resources

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Workshop

Open Access to Convivencia: People and their Representations in the Iberian World and Beyond

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Workshop

Resources and Economies of Knowledge in the Anthropocene

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Conference

Transfer of Knowledge in the Iberian Colonial World

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Workshop

Aristotelisms in Syriac and Arabic

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Global Transfer of Knowledge—Transfer of Knowledge in Systems

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Global Transfer of Knowledge—Individuals as Actors of Transfer of Knowledge

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Presentations, Talks, & Teaching Activities

Energy Transformations. Perspectives from the Humanities

Harnack Haus, Berlin

Carbon cycles: coal, knowledge and global industrializations

Zeit für Relationen—Relationen der Zeit

Heinrich Heine Universität, Düsseldorf

Vermischung oder das Problem einer Globalgeschichte Europas

Central Europe and Colonialism: Migrations, Knowledges, Perspectives, Commodities

Wroclaw University, Academia Europaea, Wroclaw

Central European Missionaries in Sudan. Geopolitics and Alternative Colonialism in Mid-Nineteenth Century Africa

Resources and Economies of Knowledge in the Anthropocene

MPIWG, Berlin

Why History of Resources? Approaches from a Fossil Coal Perspective

VIII Congrès International et Interdisciplinaire: Sciences, savoirs et politique: Alexander von Humboldt et Aimé Bonpland entre Europa et Amérique Latine

SciencesPo / IHEAL, Paris

Coal and coal mining in XIXth Century Latin America: Geology, Industry and Mining before and after A.v.Humboldt.

ESHS

ESHS, Lisbon

Coal: A Global Object of Knowledge Circulation

Transfer of Knowledge in the Iberian Colonial World

MPIWG

Cuban Coal and the Perspective of New Energy Resources in Late Spanish Colonialism

News & Press

Gretchen Bakke, Benjamin Steininger, & Helge Wendt in MaxPlanckForschung on the topic of fossil fuels

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Tagesspiegel report on Humboldt event with Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut SPK & Centre Marc Bloch

 

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News agency EFE publish article on Alexander von Humboldt cooperation event.

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