• Geopolitics and Security
• Capitalism and Infrastructure
• Globalisation and Logistics
• Global Environmental History

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

Lars Kury, “Co-Constructing Nature’s Highway: Environment and Infrastructure in the Straits of Malacca,” The Routledge Handbook of Modern Infrastructure History, ed. Sebasien de Pretto et al. (London: Routledge, forthcoming).

Lars Kury, “Wildlife Corridors: Animal Mobilities and Environmental Infrastructure in the Straits Settlements, c.1870s–1920s,” Environment and History 0 (2025), 1–26 (ahead of print), https://doi.org/10.3828/whpeh.63861480345877.

Lars Kury, "Forschen – Vernetzen – Vermitteln. Die Forschungsstelle «Diplomatische Dokumente der Schweiz» (Dodis),” traverse: Zeitschrift für Geschichte – Revue d’Histoire 1 (2025), https://revue-traverse.ch/article/forschen-vernetzen-vermitteln-die-forschungsstelle-diplomatische-dokumente-der-schweiz-dodis/.

Lars Kury, Review of: "Andreas Greiner, Human Porterage and Colonial State Formation in German East Africa, 1880s–1914: Tensions of Transport”, Sehepunkte 24, 15 May 2024, https://www.sehepunkte.de/2024/05/38713.html.

Lars Felten-Kury, “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 (2022), 41–66, https://www.ghi-dc.org/fileadmin/publications/Bulletin/bu70/GHI-70_04FEAKuryStraitsofMalacca_3pp_41-66.pdf. 

Lars Kury and Lars Dickmann, “Souvenirs aus Meiji Japan”, in Tina Asmussen et al. (eds.) Materialized Histories. Eine Festschrift 2.0. (Basel: Hypotheses), https://mhistories.hypotheses.org/2171.