• Geopolitik und Sicherheit
• Kapitalismus und Infrastruktur
• Globalisierung und Logistik
• Globale Umweltgeschichte

Nature’s Highway: Environment and Infrastructure in the Straits of Malacca, c.1870–1910s

This PhD project explores how the Straits of Malacca became one of the world’s most important transit corridors during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It examines how imperial powers transformed this dynamic maritime region into a “natural highway” through mapping, engineering, and environmental control. Using the concept of environmental infrastructure, the project shows how natural processes and human interventions together created new routes of global mobility and trade. By linking environmental change, imperial expansion, and technological innovation, it reveals how the infrastructures of empire laid the foundations for today’s global logistics networks — and how their ecological consequences remain visible in the present.

Positions

Since June 2026: Deputy Managing Director and Lecturer in European Global Studies, Institute for European Global Studies, University of Basel

February 2021 – May 2026: Assistant in European Global Studies, Institute for European Global Studies, University of Basel

December 2018 – January 2021: Student Assistant, Department of History, University of Basel

Education

2026: PhD (summa cum laude), University of Basel

Dissertation: Worldmaking in the Age of Empire: Environment, Infrastructure, and the Straits of Malacca, c. 1870s–1910s

Research Stays in the United States, France, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom

2018–2020: M.A. in Political Science and History (summa cum laude), University of Basel,

MA thesis: Die "Indochina Operational Group” 1972–1975. A Global Humanitarian Moment

2014–2017: B.A. in History and Geography, University of Basel