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Copyright information

Copyright information

This exhibition was created by Maximilian Feichtner, Jonas Stuck, Ayushi Dhawan, Christina Lennartz, and Simone M. Müller in 2021 under a CC BY 4.0 International license. This refers only to the text and does not include image rights.

Images used in the exhibition carry individual licenses (please click on an image for information). The images below are featured on the exhibition landing page. Please click for details.

Toxic Relationships: Uncovering the Worlds of Hazardous Waste

Modern societies’ hazardous by-products cast a dark shadow over the planet. A threat to humans and the environment alike, hazardous waste comes in many guises: discarded batteries, asbestos, giant ships, or tailings from mining operations. While these objects might not seem dangerous at first sight, they have characteristics and components that make them potentially deadly. This virtual exhibition gives you an insight into the obscure world of hazardous waste, its questionable trade across the globe, and the people successfully fighting for safe and just waste management. The Hazardous Travels research team takes you on a journey both into our research and to the edges of our societies that many prefer not to see.

Maximilian Feichtner, Jonas Stuck, Ayushi Dhawan, Christina Lennartz, and Simone M. Müller

About the author

Feichtner, Maximilian
Feichtner, Maximilian

Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, Germany

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Maximilian Feichtner studied Spanish, political science, and social sciences in Freiburg, Cape Town, and Bangkok. He participated in the Global Studies Programme and received a joint MA in social sciences from the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and the University of Cape Town in July 2016. Maximilian joined the DFG Emmy Noether Research Group “Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy” at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich in April 2017. In 2021, he finished his PhD thesis with the title “The Metamorphosis of the Amazon: Oilmen, Hazardous Waste, and the Ecuadorean Rainforest in the 20th Century.” You can learn more about his project here.

orcid.org/0000-0003-1284-4086

Stuck, Jonas
Stuck, Jonas

Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, Germany

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Jonas Stuck is a PhD student at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, and part of the DFG Emmy Noether Research Group “Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy.” He is working on the export of hazardous waste from West Germany to its East German neighbor during the Cold War. His research interests include the international trade of hazardous waste, the history of environmental citizen movements, and the intersection of science communication with the arts and academia. He graduated with an MA in Contemporary History from the Humboldt University Berlin, the Sciences Po Lyon and the Université Lumière Lyon 2. You can learn more about his project here.

Dhawan, Ayushi
Dhawan, Ayushi

Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, Germany

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Ayushi Dhawan is currently undertaking a PhD in Environmental Humanities at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. She is a part of the DFG Emmy-Noether Research Group “Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy.” With a background in history, her research focuses on the Alang Shipbreaking Industry in Gujarat, 1983–2012. She completed her BA Hons. and MA in History from the University of Delhi in 2014, before joining the foundation year at the University of Leiden in 2014–2015, supported by an ENCOMPASS Scholarship. Subsequently, she earned her research master’s degree in colonial and global history in 2017. She has written various blog posts for Seeing the Woods, Kunsthal Extra City #Cahier 5, and Environmental History Now. Learn more about here research project here.

Lennartz, Christina
Lennartz, Christina

Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, Germany

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Christina Lennartz is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration at the Ludwig-Maximilians University. Before commencing her studies in 2017, she spent a year working on organic farms in Southern France, California, and Oregon, which sparked her initial interest in environmentalism and sustainability. Following her travels, she worked in the Berlin start-up scene and media industry as an editor as well as a project, content and social media media manager. She joined the DFG Emmy-Noether Research Group “Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy” as a research assistant in September 2018.

Müller, Simone M.
Müller, Simone M.

Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, Germany

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Dr. Simone M. Müller is Project Director and Principal Investigator of the DFG Emmy Noether Research Group “Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy” at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich. She works at the intersection of globalization studies, economic and social history, and environmental humanities. Her research interests range from the international trade in hazardous waste material and the intellectual history of economic ecological thinking, to green city concepts and the study of ocean space. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, among them from the Smithsonian Institution, the Science History Institute, and the University of Pennsylvania. She is a member of the Young ZiF (Center for Interdisciplinary Research) of the University of Bielefeld and in 2017 was nominated as one of the leading female academics in her field by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Bosch Foundation. You can learn more about her research here.

orcid.org/0000-0003-1538-3131

Browse the exhibition

Exhibition Overview
Introduction
Containing Contamination
Waste Governance
Hazardous Profits
Structures of Inequality
Hazardous Hope
Graphic: “Toxic Inheritance”
About the Exhibition

About the Author

About the Author

Sabine Wilke.

Human-Nature Relations in German Literature: A Curated Stroll through a History of Entanglement

This virtual exhibition features, in English translation, short excerpts from German-language literary texts that address human-nature entanglements. The aim is to show how literature can contribute to understanding and problematizing the relation between humans and nonhuman nature. What aspects of human-nature relations are addressed, at what point in literary history, and how are they shaped poetically? This virtual exhibition is also available in German here.

Sabine Wilke

About the author

Wilke, Sabine
Wilke, Sabine

University of Washington, USA

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Sabine Wilke is Professor of German at the University of Washington. Her research and teaching interests include modern German literature and culture, intellectual history and theory, and cultural and visual studies. She has written books and articles on body constructions in modern German literature and culture, German unification, the history of German film and theater, contemporary German authors and filmmakers. Most recently, Wilke was involved in a larger project about German colonialism and postcoloniality and the question of comparative colonialisms, especially how Germany related differently to Africa and the South Pacific. With assistance from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Wilke is directing a transatlantic research network on the environmental humanities and is working on a new project on environmental criticism, in particular the overlapping concerns of postcolonialism and ecocriticism.

Browse the exhibition

Exhibition Overview
Introduction
Transformation of Landscapes
Mountains, Glaciers, Climate
Forests and Deforestation
Pollution and Waste
Further Reading
The Environment & Society Portal is a project of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, an institute founded in 2009 as a joint initiative of LMU Munich and the Deutsches Museum. Read more about the Portal in English and in German.