alexander geppert picture

Alexander C.T. Geppert

Associate Professor of History and European Studies; Global Network Associate Professor

EDUCATION

European University Institute, Florence, PhD in History and Civilization; Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, MA in Modern and Early Modern History; Johns Hopkins University, MA in History; Universität Bielefeld, BA in History, Philosophy and Psychology

Research Interests

Twentieth-Century European Social and Cultural History; History of Science, Technology and Knowledge; Astroculture, Outer Space and Extraterrestrial Life; Planetary History; History of Time, Temporality and the Future; History and Theory of Historiography

BIO

Alexander C.T. Geppert is Associate Professor of History and European Studies and Global Network Associate Professor at New York University, with a joint appointment at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies and NYU Shanghai. He is also an associated member of NYU’s History Department. During 2026 Alexander Geppert will be in residence at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study in Bremen. 

Alexander Geppert holds four history degrees: a B.A. from Universität Bielefeld, an M.A. from Johns Hopkins University, an M.A. from Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. From 2010 to 2016 he directed the Emmy Noether Research Group 'The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century' at Freie Universität Berlin. He has held long-term fellowships at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the IFK Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften in Vienna, the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut in Essen, the German Historical Institutes in London and Paris, at Harvard University, the University of Cambridge, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Deutsches Museum. In 2018 NASA and the Society for the History of Technology awarded him their Fellowship in Aerospace History. Alexander Geppert has held the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. He has also served as the Eleanor Searle Visiting Professor of History at the California Institute of Technology.

His research focuses on the nexus of spatiality, knowledge and transcendence in varying configurations, including outer space, miracles, expositions and the history and theory of historiography, in particular temporality. His book publications include Fleeting Cities: Imperial Expositions in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (2nd edn, 2013); New Dangerous Liaisons: Discourses on Europe and Love in the Twentieth Century (2010, co-ed.); Wunder: Poetik und Politik des Staunens im 20. Jahrhundert (2011, co-ed.); Obsession der Gegenwart: Zeit im 20. Jahrhundert (2015, co-ed.); Berliner Welträume im frühen 20. Jahrhundert (2017, co-ed.); and Rocket Stars: Astrocultural Genealogies in the Global Space Age (2025, ed.). He is also the editor of a trilogy on European Astroculture, consisting of Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century (2nd edn, 2018, ed.); Limiting Outer Space: Astroculture after Apollo (2018, ed.); and Militarizing Outer Space: Astroculture, Dystopia and the Cold War (2nd edn, 2023, co-ed.). Alexander Geppert is currently at work on two monographs, Astroculture: Europe in the Age of Space, a cultural history of outer space in the European imagination of the twentieth century and a sequel, Planetizing Earth: An Extra-Terrestrial History of the Global Present, a history of Earth visualization, satellization and planetarity since 1946.

Alexander Geppert convenes the NYU Space Talks: History, Politics, Astroculture lecture series and directs a research group on planetary history, with graduate students, junior, mid-career and senior scholars from four continents.

Books

Journal Issues

Selected Articles

"Rocket Stars, Space Personas and the Global Space Age," British Journal for the History of Science 58.2 (June 2025), 195—214. 

"The Celebrification of Qian Xuesen," British Journal for the History of Science 58.2 (June 2025), 237—60.

"Futures Found and Lost," The Journal of Modern History 49.3 (Sept. 2022), 689—92.

"Phantasie, Projekt, Produkt: Astrokultur und der Weltraum des 20. Jahrhunderts," Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 69.29/30 (July 2019), 19—25.

"Lieux de l’avenir: Zur Lokalgeschichte des Weltraumdenkens," Technikgeschichte 84.4 (2017), 285—304 (with Tilmann Siebeneichner).

"L’astroculture européenne, terrain de recherche," Humanités Spatiales (May 2016) (with Catherine Radtka).

"Die Zeit des Weltraumzeitalters, 1942–1972," Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Sonderheft 25 (2015), 218—50.

"Zeit-Geschichte als Aufgabe," Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Sonderheft 25 (2015), 7—36 (with Till Kössler).

"Rethinking the Space Age: Astroculture and Technoscience, 1900–1975," History and Technology 28.3 (2012), 219—23.

"Extraterrestrial Encounters: UFOs, Science, and the Quest for Transcendence, 1947–1972," History and Technology 28.3 (2012), 335—62.

"Space Personae: Cosmopolitan Networks of Peripheral Knowledge, 1927–1957," Journal of Modern European History 6.2 (2008), 262—86.

"Weltstadt für einen Sommer: Die Berliner Gewerbeausstellung 1896 im europäischen Kontext," Mitteilungen des Vereins für die Geschichte Berlins 103.1 (2007), 434—48.

"Città brevi: Storia, storiografia e teoria delle pratiche espositive europee, 1851–2000," Memoria e Ricerca 17 (2004), 7—18.

"Moderne Magie: Orte des Okkulten und die Epistemologie des Übersinnlichen, 1880–1930," Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 14.4 (2003) , 5—36.

"Luoghi, città, prospettive: Le esposizioni e l’urbanistica fin-de-siècle," Memoria e Ricerca 12 (2003), 115—36.

"Welttheater: Die Geschichte des europäischen Ausstellungswesens im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert," Neue Politische Literatur 47.1 (2002), 10—61.

"Historians in Flux: The Concept, Task and Challenge of Ego-Histoire," Historein 3 (2001), 7—18 (with Luisa Passerini).

"Vergleich und Transfer im Vergleich," Comparativ 10.1 (2000), 95—111 (with Andreas Mai).

"Divine Sex, Happy Marriage, Regenerated Nation: Marie Stopes’ Marital Manual Married Love and the Making of a Best-Seller, 1918–1955," Journal of the History of Sexuality 8.3 (1998), 389—433.

"Forschungstechnik oder historische Disziplin? Methodische Probleme der Oral History" Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 45.5 (1994), 303—23.

 

Selected Book Chapters

"Planetarity, Planetization, and the Global Space Age: Genealogy and Prolegomena," in Asif A. Siddiqi (ed.), Cosmic Fragments: Dislocation and Discontent in the Global Space Age, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025, 256–70, 330–33.

"The Post-Apollo Paradox: Envisioning Limits during the Planetized 1970s," in: Alexander C.T. Geppert (ed.): Limiting Outer Space: Astroculture After Apollo, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 3–26.

"World's Fairs," in: Leibniz Institute of European History (ed.): European History Online (EGO), Mainz, 2018.

"Imaginary Infrastructures and the Making of Outer Space," in: Lukas Feireiss and Michael Najjar (eds): Planetary Echoes: Exploring the Implications of Human Settlement in Space, Leipzig: Spector, 2017, 124–34.

"Infrastrukturen der Weltraumimagination: Außenstationen im 20. Jahrhundert," in: Outer Space: Faszination Weltraum [exhibition catalogue Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland], Bonn: nicolai, 2014 124–7.

"European Astrofuturism, Cosmic Provincialism: Historicizing the Space Age," in: Alexander C.T. Geppert (ed.): Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 3–24.

"Werden und Vergehen eines sprachgewaltigen Schicksalsszenarios: Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (1918/1922)," in: Uffa Jensen et al. (ed.): Gewalt und Gesellschaft: Klassiker modernen Denkens neu gelesen, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011, 112–21.

"Wunder der Zeitgeschichte," in: Alexander C.T. Geppert and Till Kössler (eds.): Wunder: Poetik und Politik des Staunens im 20. Jahrhundert, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011, 9–68 (with Till Kössler).

"'Dear Adolf!' Locating Love in Nazi Germany," in: Luisa Passerini and Alexander C.T. Geppert (eds.): New Dangerous Liaisons: Discourses on Europe and Love in the Twentieth Century, Oxford: Berghahn, 2010, 158–77.

"Die normative Kraft des Flüchtigen: Exponierungen des Globalen in der Welt der Weltausstellungen, 1851–1900," in: Ulrike Bergermann et al. (eds.): Das Planetarische: Kultur – Technik – Medien im postglobalen Zeitalter, Munich: Fink, 2010, 81–96.

"Anfang – oder Ende des planetarischen Zeitalters? Der 'Sputnik-Schock' als Realitäts-Effekt, 1945–1957," in: Igor J. Polianski and Matthias Schwartz (eds.): Im Zeichen des Sputnik, Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2009, 74–94.

"Flights of Fancy: Outer Space and the European Imagination, 1923–1969," in: Steven J. Dick and Roger D. Launius (eds.): Societal Impact of Spaceflight, Washington, DC: NASA, 585–600, 2007.

"Okkultismus als Anti-Ignorabimus: Zur Geschichte einer epistemischen Mesalliance, 1872–1913," in: Kurt Bayertz et al. (eds.): Weltanschauung, Philosophie und Naturwissenschaft im 19. Jahrhundert. Vol. 3: Der Ignorabimus-Streit, Hamburg: Meiner, 2008, 253–79.

"Verräumlichung: Kommunikative Praktiken in historischer Perspektive, 1840–1930," in: Alexander C.T. Geppert et al. (eds.): Ortsgespräche: Raum und Kommunikation im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2005, 9–49.

"True Copies: Time and Space Travels at British Imperial Exhibitions, 1880–1930," in: Hartmut Berghoff et al. (eds.): The Making of Modern Tourism: The Cultural History of the British Experience, 1600–2000, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, 223–48.

"Exponierte Identitäten? Imperiale Ausstellungen, ihre Besucher und das Problem der Wahrnehmung, 1870–1930," in: Ulrike von Hirschhausen and Jörn Leonhard (eds.): Nationalismen in Europa: West- und Osteuropa im Vergleich, Göttingen, 2001: Wallstein, 181–203.