• Global Environmental History
• Theories and Methodologies of Global History
• Imperialism, Infrastructure, and More-Than-Human Histories
• Globalization and Colonial Economies

Infrastructuring Nature: The Malacca Strait and the Making of an Environmental Transit Corridor, c. 1870-1910

In the twenty-first-century world, historical accounts of global interconnectedness are increasingly taking an interdisciplinary approach that challenges conventional notions of territoriality. This project aims to utilize the analytical potential of "environmental transit corridors" to gain deeper insights into such dynamics and their ecological dimensions. By combining the research fields of infrastructure history and environmental history, this project adopts a multi-species and multi-natural approach to examine the transformation of non-artificial transit corridors into environmental types of infrastructure in the age of high imperialism. Using the Malacca Strait as an empirical case study from the period between c. 1870 and 1910, the project argues that imperial intervention in late nineteenth-century non-artificial transit corridors caused a process of “environmental infrastructuring,” an engineering process of both nature and culture, including multiple agencies and lasting impacts on the corridor’s global connectivity. 

Since February 2021: Assistant for European and Global History at the Institute for European Global Studies, University of Basel

December 2018 – January 2021: Student Assistant in the SNSF-funded research project Printed Markets. Information, Data and News in the Basel Avisblatt, 1729–1844

August 2018 – January 2021: Student Assistant at the Department of History, University of Basel (Chair of Prof. Dr. Susanna Burghartz)

February 2018 – December 2020: M.A. in History and Political Science, University of Basel (summa cum laude),
Title of the Master Thesis: The „Indochina Operational Group“ 1972–1975. A Global Humanitarian Moment

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

Kury, Lars (2022) “Flowing Connections in the Strait of Malacca: Nature, Trade, and the Rise of a Global Transit Corridor, c. 1850-1900”, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute 70, pp. 41–66. Available at: https://www.ghi-dc.org/fileadmin/publications/Bulletin/bu70/GHI-70_04FEAKuryStraitsofMalacca_3pp_41-66.pdf.

Kury, Lars (2022) “Tracing Socio-Ecological Projects in British Malaya”, FOCAL. The Asia Directories Database. Institute for European Global Studies. Available at: https://www.asia-directories.org/focal/studies/#socio.

Kury, Lars and Dickmann, Lars (2021) “Souvenirs aus Meiji Japan”, in Asmussen, T., Brugger, E., Christadler, M., Rathmann-Lutz, A., Reimann, A., Roth, C., Schober, S.-M., and Serif, I. (eds.) Materialized Histories. Eine Festschrift 2.0. Basel: Hypotheses. Available at: https://mhistories.hypotheses.org/2171.

Kury, Lars : Globale Geschichten aus der Sandgrube, in Europainstitut Basel (ed.): Newsletter 130 (2020) pp. 4–7. Available at: https://europa.unibas.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/europa/PDFs_Newsletter/Newsletter_130.pdf.

• Associated member (since 2021) in the SNSF-funded research project The Divisive Power of Citizenship (Institute for European Global Studies, University of Basel).
• Member (since 2021) in the research project Basel’s global paradise. Research in virtual reality and global history (Institute for European Global Studies, University of Basel).
• Student assistant (2018–2021) in the SNSF-funded research project Printed Markets. Information, Data, and News in the Basel Avisblatt, 1729–1844 (Department of History, University of Basel)