Philipp Lehmann
Desert Edens: Colonial Climate Engineering in the Age of Anxiety
Part of the MIT Spring 2024 Architecture Lecture Series. Presented with the History Theory Criticism Group.
Philipp Lehmann is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside, where he teaches environmental history, history of science, and modern European history. After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2014, he worked as a Research Scholar in Department II of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, where he co-directed the Research Groups “Experiencing the Global Environment” and “Knowledge Practices in Bureaucracies.” His research focuses on the histories of colonial data gathering, the development of climate science, and the emergence of a global environmental vision in the geographical and earth sciences. His book Desert Edens: Colonial Climate Engineering in the Age of Anxiety was published with Princeton University Press in 2022. He is currently working on a project entitled “Platonic Landscapes: Atlantis and the Search for Environmental Utopias,” which examines the academic and popular interest in localizations of the mythical lost city during the first half of the twentieth century. The project traces the debates surrounding Atlantis and its apocalyptic demise, paying close attention to how political and economic crises in Europe helped to shape the image of an ideal society that managed to harmonize advanced technology with pristine and bountiful landscapes.
Lectures are free and open to the public.
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