After nearly three decades of advancing groundbreaking research in the history of science, the Department on Structural Changes in Systems of Knowledge, founded and led by Jürgen Renn from 1994 to 2023, closed on December 31, 2024.

The Institute extends its gratitude to Jürgen Renn and to the many researchers who worked in his department for their contributions to the institute and to the discipline. These contributions include, among others, the development of new perspectives on the history of physics and the long-term evolution of knowledge, innovative methods in the digital humanities, large-scale public exhibitions, and a major project on the history of the Max Planck Society. Further information about this research can be found here.

In June 2022, Renn was appointed by the Max Planck Society as founding director of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, where he heads the Department on Structural Changes of the Technosphere. At the new institute, which grew out of more than a decade of persistent work at the MPIWG, Jürgen Renn continues his research on the long-term evolution of knowledge in relation to the Anthropocene. Further information about the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology can be found here.

In its last year of operation, Renn’s former department was led in an acting capacity by Etienne Benson, Director of the Department on Knowledge Systems and Collective Life, with the support of research group leader Matteo Valleriani. As this era at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science comes to a close, we thank Jürgen Renn and wish him every success with his new institute and department in Jena.