Dr. Bernhard Gißibl

Societies have always been more than human formations. Their ideas of themselves, their functioning, and, indeed, their survival depend upon their relationships to other species, particularly animals. My research is particularly interested in how human societies have organized their relationships with multispecies life in the past.

Studying the historical relationships between humans and the animate and inanimate environment around them is necessarily a trans- and interdisciplinary undertaking. Therefore, my research draws upon approaches and methods from the historical environmental humanities, multispecies studies, cultural and science studies, and political ecology.

Since 2012, I have been a permanent research associate at the Leibniz Institute for European History in Mainz. Previously, I held research and teaching positions at LMU Munich, Jacobs University Bremen (now Constructor University), and the University of Mannheim, where I received my PhD in 2009 with a dissertation on the origins of nature conservation in Tanzania under German colonial rule.

My project within the Collaborative Research Center 1482 “Studies in Human Differentiation” is a sequel to this earlier research, dealing with wildlife sciences in a context of “zoological human differentiation.” It examines human-animal relations at a scientific research station in one of the most iconic national parks in the World, the Serengeti Research Institute in postcolonial Tanzania.