PD Dr. Franziska Torma

Franziska Torma works on the history of marine biology in a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG-Eigene Stelle, 2017–2021). Franziska studied history and theater studies in Munich and Bochum. In 2009 she completed her PhD, which focused on German scientific expeditions that described and mapped Central Asia between 1890 and 1930. After her postdoc at the Rachel Carson Center from 2009 to 2012, she was a John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University (2012–2013). She has held several positions at German universities, including that of project coordinator of the collaborative research project “The Language of Biofacts” (TU Munich) funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (2015–2017).

She has published on the history of mountaineering, animal protection issues in Africa, on Germany and the oceans, and on the broader field of colonialism with special reference to Germany’s colonial culture and ideology. Her research interests include the history of science, and the cultural and environmental history of the nineteenth and twentieth century.

Research Project:

The Marine Environmental Awareness: Knowledge, Media, and Politics of a Thriving Underwater World (1870–1980)

Selected Publications:

• with Karin Zachmann and Bernhard Gill, eds. Mit Biofakten leben. Sprache und Materialität von Pflanzen und Lebensmitteln. Nomos: Baden-Baden, 2018.
• with John R. Gillis, eds. Fluid Frontiers. New Currents in Marine Environmental History. Cambridge: The Whitehorse Press, 2015.
• Turkestan-Expeditionen. Zur Kulturgeschichte deutscher Forschungsreisen nach Mittelasien (1890–1930). 1800|2000 Kulturgeschichte der Moderne, Band 5, edited by Peter Becker, Jane Caplan, Alexander C.T. Geppert, Martin H. Geyer, and Jakob Tanner, Jakob. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011.
• Eine Naturschutzkampagne in der Ära Adenauer. Bernhard Grzimeks Afrikafilme in den Medien der 50er Jahre. Munich: Martin Meidenbauer, 2004.
• with Christian Kehrt. “Lebensraum Meer. Umwelt- und entwicklungspolitische Ressourcenfragen in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren.” Themenheft Geschichte und Gesellschaft 40, no. 3 (September 2014): 313–22.
• “Science, the Media and Development: The International Indian Ocean Expedition (1959–1965).” In Soundings and Crossings: Doing Science at Sea 1800–1970, edited by Katherine Anderson and Helen M. Rozwadowski, 315–44. Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications, 2016.