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About Me

Dr. Katrin Kleemann is an environmental historian working on volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and maritime history. Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher at the German Maritime Museum / Leibniz Institute for Maritime History in Bremerhaven, Germany.

Katrin studied history, cultural anthropology, and geology at the University of Kiel, the Free University Berlin, and LMU Munich. In 2020, she obtained her doctorate from LMU Munich with a major in history and a minor in geology. She was a member of the international and interdisciplinary doctoral program “Environment and Society” at the Rachel Carson Center. Her book A Mist Connection. An Environmental History of the Laki Eruption and Its Legacy will be published in De Gruyter’s Historical Catastrophe Studies series in 2022.

Previously, Katrin worked at the Department of History at the University of Freiburg, the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at LMU Munich, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and was a fellow at the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. Katrin received a fellowship from the Andrea von Braun Foundation, which supports interdisciplinary research. She also is the social media editor for the Climate History Network and HistoricalClimatology.com.

Recent Publications

A full list of my publications can be found here.

 

Some recent and forthcoming publications are:

Kleemann, Katrin. The Laki Eruption of 1783: An Environmental History of the Laki eruption of 1783 and Its Legacy. (Historical Catastrophe Studies series.) Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2022. (forthcoming)

Kleemann, Katrin. “Active Volcanoes, Active Imaginations: Fire-Spitting Mountains and Subterraneous Roars in the German Territories in the Summer of 1783.” Global Environment. (forthcoming)

Stoffel, Markus, Christophe Corona, Michael Sigl, Heli Huhtamaa, Emmanuel Garnier, Samuli Helama, Sébastien Guillet, Francis Ludlow, Arlene Crampsie, Katrin Kleemann, Chantal Camenisch, Joseph McConnell, and Chaochao Gao. “Climatic, Weather and Socio-Economic Conditions Corresponding with the Mid-17th Century Eruption Cluster.” Climate of the Past (2022). https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2021-148. (forthcoming)

Kleemann, Katrin. “Maximum Latewood Density Analysis Solves Long-Standing Mystery between Temperature Reconstructions and Historical Records.” Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology 37, no. 4 (2022), e2022PA004444. doi.org/10.1029/2022PA004444 (peer-reviewed)

Degroot, Dagomar, Kevin Anchukaitis, Martin Bauch, Jakob Burnham, Fred Carnegy, Jianxin Cui, Kathryn de Luna, Piotr Guzowski, George Hambrecht, Heli Huhtamaa, Adam Izdebski, Katrin Kleemann, Emma Moesswilde, Naresh Neupane, Timothy Newfield, Qing Pei, Elena Xoplaki, and Natale Zappia. “Towards a Rigorous Understanding of Societal Responses to Climate Change.” Nature 591 (2021): 539–550. doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03190-2. (peer-reviewed)

Kleemann, Katrin. “Living in the Time of a Subsurface Revolution: The 1783 Calabrian Earthquake Sequence.” Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia (Summer 2019), no. 30. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. (peer-reviewed)

Kleemann, Katrin. “‘Moby Dick’ in the Rhine: How a Beluga Whale Raised Awareness of Water Pollution in West Germany.” Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia Spring 2018, no. 6. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society.  doi.org/10.5282/rcc/8222. (peer-reviewed)

Kleemann, Katrin. Encyclopedia of the Environment, “The Laki Fissure Eruption, 1783-1784.” Grenoble: Encyclopedia of the Environment, 2020. Online ISSN 2555-0950. https://www.encyclopedie-environnement.org/en/society/laki-fissure-eruption-1783-1784/. 

Kleemann, Katrin, and Jeroen Oomen, eds. “Communicating the Climate: From Knowing Change to Changing Knowledge,” RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society 2019, no. 4. doi.org/10.5282/rcc/8822.

Media Coverage

I have been featured on different radio programs on Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

Social Media

@katrinkleemann

Country Focus

Germany, Western Europe, Iceland, North America, Oceans

Expertise by Geography

Atlantic, Germany, North America, Pacific, Western Europe

Expertise by Chronology

18th century, 19th century, Early Modern, Modern, 20th century

Expertise by Topic

Environment, Science, Technology