The six-year Knowing the Planet research project addresses a highly topical issue in environmental and knowledge history: how knowledge about the planetary environment was produced in the second half of the twentieth century – and who was involved. The focus is on new technologies such as satellite remote sensing, which promised African scientists and administrators the ability to inventory national resources after political independence. Yet these technologies had a longer history in colonial survey sciences and practices of extraction. The research group will investigate three scientific fields closely entangled with questions of sovereignty and development: hydrology, geology and meteorology. Particular attention will be paid to East Africa, which has been regarded since the nineteenth century as a “laboratory” for scientific experimentation and became the seat of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi in 1972.
Dr Ismay Milford is a historian of knowledge, technology and the environment, focusing on twentieth-century East Africa. Her research has spanned religion, activism, regionalism, print, radio and satellite technologies. She joined Leipzig University in September 2025. From 2019 to 2022, she was a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh on the project Another World? East Africa and the Global 1960s, which resulted in a co-authored book and the online resource East Africa’s Global Lives. From 2023 to 2025, she held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at Freie Universität Berlin for a project on the information society in independent East Africa. Her first book, African Activists in a Decolonising World, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2023 and is based on her PhD from the European University Institute in Florence.
Research focus on political ecology and natural resources
On her new position, Ismay Milford says: “I’m really pleased to be bringing the Emmy Noether group to Leipzig University. Leipzig is an ideal host, given its long-standing strengths in African history and Global Studies, and a growing research focus relating to political ecology and natural resources. Most importantly, the infrastructure to bring all these areas into conversation already exists, in the form of ReCentGlobe and the new Global Hub. This means the project won’t be conducted in isolation, but will be shaped by – and hopefully help shape – a wider discussion, which is what makes research feel worthwhile.”
On the project’s interdisciplinary orientation, she adds: “This is also the most ambitious project I’ve undertaken in terms of interdisciplinary collaboration, so it will benefit from existing links with nearby institutions like the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – which co-hosts a leading remote sensing centre, RSC4Earth – and the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena. Finally, there are great opportunities to discuss the project beyond academic settings, through the annual Globe festival for example.”
From 2027, the research group will comprise two postdoctoral and one doctoral researcher. It is based at the Institute of African Studies at Leipzig University and will work closely with the Research Centre Global Dynamics (ReCentGlobe) and the Graduate School Global and Area Studies (GSGAS).
