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 humanitiesCurrent research themes
- The historical and cultural geographies of weather- and climate-health.
- The psychoanalytic, atmospheric, and affective geographies of air (purification).
- Elemental geographies and media studies.
Google Scholar
Interview
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
2025
“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.
Teaching
Department of Arts and Media, University of Potsdam
MA European Media Studies (2023-24)- Affect, activism, ether, ghosts: radio as a political and elemental medium (2024)
- Media histories of wind (2023, with German Studies)
- What is a phenomenon? Introduction to phenomenology (of media) (2022-23)
Department of Geography, University of Cambridge
MPhil Anthropocene Studies seminars (2020-22)- What changes with climate change? Indigenous, feminist, and phenomenological approaches to climate(-change) (2021-22)
- Getting a feel for the Anthropocene: on technology and shame (2020-21)
- Living with Global Change (2020)
- Understanding Cultural Geographies (2020)
- Environmental Knowledges & the Politics of Expertise (2019)
Department of Philosophy, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Teaching assistant (2017-2018)- Logical and Critical Reasoning (2018)
- Introduction to Ancient Philosophy (2017)
Presented at...