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
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
"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.
Teaching
Department of Geography, Durham University
BA Geography (2025-)- Geographies of crisis (2025-26)
- Social and cultural geographies (2025-26)
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...