In this working lunch, Lasse Heerten will present his recently finished manuscript. Zooming into the port of Hamburg, the book develops a locally-focused planetary history for the Anthropocene to flesh out the port city’s significance for the histories of empires, of transimperial entanglements, of capitalism, of labour relations and (im)mobilities in the age of steam.

Lasse Heerten is currently the interim professor for modern history at the University of Heidelberg in the winter semester 2025/2026. He is an historian specialising in modern and global history, with research interests in imperial, transimperial and (post-)colonial entanglements, the history of port cities, humanitarianism and human rights. In July of 2025 he submitted his habilitation thesis “Water and Stone: Hamburg, its Port, and the River Elbe in the Age of Global Empires" at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

Please register by sending an email to paul.blickle@clutterunibas.ch