Dr. Franz Mauelshagen studied History, Philosophy and International Law at the Universities of Bonn (Germany) and Zurich (Switzerland). In 2000, he completed his PhD thesis on the ‘Wickiana’, which is probably the most extensive 16th-century chronicle of ‘natural wonders’ in Europe. Through this work, he found vast amounts of documentation on past disasters. Thus, from 2000 onwards, Mauelshagen has contributed to renew what had previously been an almost neglected field of enquiry: the history of natural disasters. Between 2004 and 2008, he coordinated an international and interdisciplinary network on disaster history, funded by the German Research Foundation. He published several articles and co-edited two volumes on disaster history. In recent years, Mauelshagen’s focus has been on climate history. He wrote ‘Klimageschichte der Neuzeit 1500-1900’ (2009).

Mauelshagen has held post-doctoral positions at the Universities of Bielefeld (2000-2003) and Zurich (2003-2008), and taught at the Universities of Bern and St. Gallen (Switzerland). He is now a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, where he coordinates the research project ‘Climate and Culture’.