Room 220
I am group leader of the umbrella project “Knowledge in and of the Anthropocene” and a researcher and curator at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (HKW). I studied history of science and media studies in Berlin and Toronto. In 2008 I was a stipendiary at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC and from 2008 to 2011 joined the graduate program "Media of History – History of Media" (Erfurt, Weimar, Jena). In 2012, I became a Predoctoral Fellow at the MPIWG and, later that year, a Research Associate in HKW’s The Anthropocene Project. As a member of the curatorial team ever since, I was principally involved in devising and developing the follow-up projects Technosphere and the long-term initiative Anthropocene Curriculum, a global platform for experimental research and education that I co-head together with Katrin Klingan. Such work at the intersection and shifting boundaries between the natural sciences, humanities, design, and arts enables me to engage productively with the numerous facets of Anthropocene research while studying it at the same time.
Since 2017, I have been heading the Department I umbrella theme “Knowledge in and of the Anthropocene,” coordinating and developing all Anthropocene-related work in the department. In my doctoral research, I deal with the (pre)history and epistemic foundations of General Circulation Models (GCMs), which are derived from numerical weather prediction techniques but have now evolved into a core component of so-called Earth system models. Based on a historiographic reframing of the objects, techniques, and longue-durée ideals of rationally modeling atmospheric motion (i.e., the excessively hybrid configuration of empirical, theoretical, and technological practices that stabilized an epistemic manifestation of the unrepresentable), I argue for a reconceptualization of the notions of “uncertainty” and “scientific revolution” that are common terms in the literature on this subject.
The current focus of this work is on an analysis of climate records (specifically, deep-sea sediment cores) and their operative role as data repositories in constraining numerical experiments of paleoclimate reconstructions. By discussing an exemplary simulation of a possible pre-Quaternary analogue to current climatic change (the PETM), I am investigating the modes of representation, time evolution, and non-linearity in modeling a climate history of the Earth.
Curatorial Work
- 2012–14 The Anthropocene Project
- 2015–19 Technosphere, (incl. chief editor of the Technosphere Magazine)
- 2015 The Technosphere, Now
- 2016 Technosphere × Knowledge
- 2016 Anthropocene Campus: The Technosphere Issue
- 2017 1948 Unbound
- 2019 Life Forms
- 2017–18 Anthropocene Lectures
- 2018–19 Mississippi. An Anthropocene River
Projects
Anthropocene and Digital Technologies
Anthropocene Curriculum
Anthropogenic Markers: Historical and Material Contexts of a Twentieth-Century Transition in Earthly Matters
Epistemic Configurations: The Formation of Anthropocene Knowledge
Geoanthropology
History and Epistemology of the (Paleo-)Climate Sciences
IV. Anthropocene Formations
Material Practices: The Anthropocene Earth in Formation
Selected Publications
Rosol, Christoph (2021). “Finding Common Ground: The Experiment of the Anthropocene Curriculum Project.” In Jinshinsei wo tou: Jinbun, kankyo, ajia no shiten [Anthropocene and Asia: Investigation, Critique, and Contribution from the Environmental Humanities Perspective], ed. M. Terada and D. Niles. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press.
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Rosol, Marit and Christoph Rosol (2021). “Welt im Fieber: Zur Notwendigkeit einer globalen Agrar- und Ernährungswende in Zeiten des Anthropozäns .” In Der kritische Agrarbericht 2021. Schwerpunkt: Welt im Fieber - Klima & Wandel, 8–12. Hamm: ABL Verlag. https://www.kritischer-agrarbericht.de/fileadmin/Daten-KAB/KAB-2021/KAB_2021_8_12_Rosol.pdf.
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Rosol, Christoph (2019). “1948.” In Technosphäre, ed. K. Klingan and C. Rosol, 214–234. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.
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Rispoli, Giulia and Christoph Rosol, eds. (2018). Technology and the Sublime / Tecnologia e sublime. [Special issue] Azimuth: Philosophical Coordinates in Modern and Contemporary Age. 6/12. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
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Rosol, Christoph, Benjamin Steininger, Jürgen Renn, and Robert Schlögl (2018). “On the Age of Computation in the Epoch of Humankind.” Nature Outlook 563 (7733): 1–5. https://www.nature.com/articles/d42473-018-00286-8.
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Rosol, Christoph (2017). “Data, Models and Earth History in Deep Convolution : Paleoclimate Simulations and their Epistemological Unrest .” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 40 (2): 120–139. https://doi.org/10.1002/bewi.201701822.
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Rosol, Christoph (2017). “Which Design for a Weather Predictor? Speculating on the Future of Electronic Forecasting in Post‐War America .” In Cultures of Prediction in Atmospheric and Climate Science: Epistemic and Cultural Shifts in Computer-Based Modelling and Simulation, ed. M. Heymann, G. Gramelsberger, and M. Mahony, 68–84. London: Routledge.
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Rosol, Christoph, Sara Nelson, and Jürgen Renn (2017). “In the Machine Room of the Anthropocene.” The Anthropocene Review 4 (1): 2–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019617701165.
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Rosol, Christoph (2015). “Hauling Data : Anthropocene Analogues, Paleoceanography and Missing Paradigm Shifts.” Historical Social Research 40 (2): 37–66. https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.40.2015.2.37-66.
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Klingan, Katrin, Ashkan Sepahvand, Christoph Rosol, and Bernd M. Scherer, eds. (2014). Textures of the Anthropocene : Grain Vapor Ray. Cambridge, MA [u.a.]: MIT Press [u.a.].
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Rosol, Christoph (2009). “Rotoren und Leewellen. Figuren der (In-)Stabilität um 1937.” ilinx 1: 71–97. http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/ilinx/1/rosol-christoph-71/PDF/rosol.pdf.
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Rosol, Christoph (2008). RFID – Vom Ursprung einer (all)gegenwärtigen Kulturtechnologie. Berlin: Kadmos.
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