DR MAXIMILIAN GREGOR HEPACH

Geographer, i.e. phenomenologist of space.

Maximilian is Assistant Professor (Research) in Geography and Wellcome Trust Early Career Fellow at Durham University. His current research project "Under pressure: A historical and cultural geography of meteorosensitivity" is funded by the Wellcome Trust (2024-2029).

Previously, he was post-doctoral researcher and project coordinator of Weather Reports: Wind as Media, Model, Experience (AHRC & DFG, 2022-2024).

Email. GitHub. Callsign: M7YZE

Areas of specialisation

historical & cultural geography, phenomenology, environmental & medical humanities

Current research themes

  1. The historical and cultural geographies of weather- and climate-health.
  2. The psychoanalytic, atmospheric, and affective geographies of air (purification).
  3. Elemental geographies and media studies.

Google Scholar

Background

PhD in Geography (2023)
“Is climate real? A phenomenological approach to climate and its changes”
University of Cambridge

MA in Philosophy (2017)
University of Freiburg

BA in Philosophy (2015)
University of Vienna

Select publications

2026

"Climate Phenomenology", in: Philosophy Today. [Pre-print available here]

2025

"The freedom to forget", in: Dialogues in Human Geography.

"Reading Wind Diffractively: Elemental Chiasmus as Theory and Method", in: Media+Environment (with Birgit Schneider).

2024

“Klima. Am Rand des Erfahrbaren” [Climate: At the edge of experience], in: Zeitschrift für Kulturphilosophie.

“Wind Humanities: An Elemental Media Approach”, in: Media+Environment (with Ryan Bishop, J. R. Carpenter, Jussi Parikka, Birgit Schneider).

“Phenomenology”, in: The Encyclopedia of Human Geography (with Eden Kinkaid).

“Geography, influence on and by phenomenology”, in: Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (with Eden Kinkaid).

“Phänomen”, in: Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft.

2023

“Sauerian phenomenology: German Theory and Carl Sauer's The Morphology of Landscape”, in: Geographica Helvetica.

“What is lost from climate change? Phenomenology at the ‘limits to adaptation’”, in: Geographica Helvetica (with Friederike Hartz).

“Sensing weather and climate: phenomenological and ethnographic approaches”, in: Environment and Planning F: Philosophy, Theory, Models, Methods and Practice (with Catharina Lüder). [Pre-print available here]

2022

“Ephemeral climates: Plato's geographic myths and the phenomenological nature of climate and its changes”, in: Journal of Historical Geography.

2021

“Entangled phenomenologies: Reassessing (post-)phenomenology’s promise for human geography”, in: Progress in Human Geography.

“Is climate real?”, in: The Philosopher.

2017

“A Phenomenology of Weather and Qi”, in: Journal of Japanese Philosophy.