Profile

Benjamin Goossen is a historian at the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge at the University of Chicago. His research and teaching encompass European and international history, science and technology studies, and the history of the environment. His current book project, The Year of the Earth: A Planetary History, examines the global expansion and contested nature of earth science during the cold war and collapse of European empires. This book offers a deep dive into the International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958, which he studies using multilingual archival research conducted across six continents. This work on planetary thought and earth science builds on his previous scholarship about nationalism in global history. His first book, Chosen Nation: Mennonites and Germany in a Global Era, appeared with Princeton University Press in 2017.

Support for Goossen's scholarship has come from institutions including the American Historical Association, the Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (CHSTM), the Fulbright Commission, the German Academic Exchange Service, NASA, and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. His work has received awards from the Council for European Studies, the Kansas Historical Foundation, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, among others. He holds a BA from Swarthmore College and a PhD from Harvard University.