Episode 17 - Robert Groß
In the seventeenth episode of “History Exchange,” Robert Groß discusses his extraordinary career path from biologist to historian, the “non-relationship” between contemporary and environmental history, and the differences in his research approaches to the Marshall Plan compared to those of Günter Bischof.
Mag. Dr. Robert Groß took an unusual path to his career as a historian. Between 2002 and 2005, he studied biology at the University of Vienna. After successfully completing his undergraduate degree, he pursued an individualized master’s program in “Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences” from 2005 to 2010, also in Vienna. Starting in 2011, he finally took the direct path into historical studies and earned a doctorate in environmental history at the Institute for Social Ecology at the Alps-Adriatic University of Klagenfurt, which he completed with honors in 2017. Since 2019, he has been working on his habilitation thesis on the topic of European energy history.
Throughout his professional career, he has served as a research assistant on various projects at the Institute for Social Ecology at the Alps-Adriatic University of Klagenfurt. He has also completed several fellowships, including a scholarship at the Research Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Deutsches Museum in Munich and a fellowship at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 2019. Between 2018 and 2021, he served as a research and teaching assistant at the Institute of History and European Ethnology at the University of Innsbruck, where he also took over as acting chair for Univ. Prof. Patrick Kupper at the Chair of Economic and Social History in the spring of 2023. Since 2014, Robert Groß has been a member of the European Society for Environmental History and is also part of the Environmental History Cluster Austria, among other organizations. From 2013 to 2018, he also served as coordinator of the Center for Environmental History.
In conversation with students Katharina Scherer and Florian Martin Prirsch from the University of Innsbruck, Robert Groß discusses his personal and academic encounters with Günter Bischof, his remarkable career path from biologist to historian, and the “non-relationship” between contemporary history and environmental history. Both Groß and Bischof share several connections, such as their origins in Vorarlberg, Austria’s westernmost state. Their first personal meeting took place at a Starbucks café in the U.S., and both conduct research on the Marshall Plan from different perspectives.
Groß highlights the differences in their research approaches: While the Marshall Plan is often perceived in contemporary historical research as a positive social development that brought about a significant economic upswing and prosperity, environmental history examines the interactions between society and nature and emphasizes the socio-ecological side effects associated with the plan’s implementation. The focus here is primarily on the increasing environmental destruction resulting from rising demand for energy sources and resources.
In the interview, Groß reflects on his career, which led him down winding paths to environmental history. He particularly addresses his unique position between the disciplines of contemporary and environmental history, which currently remain in a state of “non-relationship” with one another. He sees numerous fields of research with great potential for fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration and hopes for stronger cooperation on equal footing between the core disciplines of history and environmental history. Such cooperation could benefit both disciplines by allowing environmental history to provide valuable insights for the historical examination of current issues of sustainability and environmental protection. In the podcast, Groß also emphasizes the need for contemporary history research to open up in order to maintain its high social standing.
Interviewer:
Katharina Scherer is a master’s student at the University of Innsbruck.
Florian Martin Prirsch is a master’s student at the University of Innsbruck.