Publications

Cronjäger, Lisa: On Cutting Forests and Avoiding Pasting: Heinrich Cotta’s Forest Maps, in Boskamp, Ulrike et al. (Hrsg.): Pasted Topographies, Heidelberg: arthistoricum.net-ART-Books, 2023 (Terrain. Studien zu topografischen Bildmedien, Band 1), S. 83–105. doi.org/10.11588/arthistoricum.

Cronjäger, Lisa; Stuber, Martin: Forstkarten als Praktiken der Nachhaltigkeit. Zu den Anfängen forstwissenschaftlicher Planung in der Schweiz (1800–1870), in: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Forstwesen 174 (6), 2023, S. 330–337. doi.org/10.3188/szf.2023.0

Cronjäger, Lisa/Klarskov, Aurea/von Schöning, Antonia/Wimmer, Mario: „Introduction”, in: History of Humanities. Forum Section: The Promises of Exactitude, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2022, p. 127–131. (https://doi.org/10.1086/721304)

Cronjäger, Lisa: „On the Exactly Balanced Use of Nature and Its Representation“, in: History of Humanities. Forum Section: The Promises of Exactitude, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2022, p. 161–175. (https://doi.org/10.1086/721307)

Cronjäger, Lisa: "The Curated Forest: Seeing Aesthetically and Scientifically," BMCCT working papers, (February 2021) No. 5 (DOI: 10.5451/unibas-ep81865).

Cronjäger, Lisa, "Bäume für das neue Jahrtausend. Die Vorstellung einer genauen Ressourcenverwaltung im Kreislaufprinzip.", in Aurea Klarskov/Lucas Knierzinger/Larissa Dätwyler (eds.):Imagination und Genauigkeit. Passagen - Grenzen - Übertragungen. Berlin: Neofelis 2021, S. 137–154.

Cronjäger, Lisa: "Klimaregulator," in Markus Krajewski/Antonia von Schöning/Mario Wimmer (eds.): Enzyklopädie der Genauigkeit, Konstanz: Konstanz University Press 2021, S. 244–253.

Cronjäger, Lisa/von Schöning, Antonia: "Auf einen Blick" in: Markus Krajewski/Antonia von Schöning/Mario Wimmer (eds.): Enzyklopädie der Genauigkeit, Konstanz: Konstanz University Press 2021, S. 16–29.

Cronjäger, Lisa: Talk with Christoph Keller about „Die Vermessung der Wälder“, episode 15 of the podcast series of the SNF-Sinergia-Projekts Medien der Genauigkeit, 27.05.2021, https://podcastlab.ch/genauigkeit.

Lectures

Roundtable „Schmelzende Landschaften. Gletscherbilder zwischen Kunst, Wissenschaft und Politik“, with Laurence Bonvin, Andreas Linsbauer, David Bucheli, Science + Fiction. Das Festival der Wissenschaften, Basel, 21.9.2023.

„Radical Transformations? Conflicts and Socioeconomic Change in and Beyond the Basel Hardt Forest, 17^th–20^th Century”, with Mirjam Hähnle, Biennial Conference of the European Society for Environmental History, University of Bern, 23.08.2023.

Roundtable: „Basel’s Many Climates. Mapping and Historicizing the Swiss Climate Movement from Within“, with Mirjam Hähnle and representatives of the Cantonal Popular Initiative for Climate Justice (Basel 2030), Climatestrike (Swiss „Fridays for Future“), Collective Climate Justice, and Klimakontor, Biennial Conference of the European Society for Environmental History, University of Bern, 24.8.2023.

„Forsteinrichtungskarten: Bildpraktiken und Konfliktmuster der Nachhaltigkeit“, 5. Landau Lectures on Art „Punkt. Linie. Netz. Weltbilder/Bildwelten in Karte und Plan“, Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau, 5.7.2023.

„Von planetaren Grenzen und lokalen Umtriebszeiten“, as part og the panel: „Gletscher, Wälder, Flechten. Umweltwissen zwischen Makro- und Mikro-Scales“, Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Medizin und Technik (GWMT), University of Vienna (online), 17.09.2021.

"Cutting and Pasting Forests: Heinrich Cotta's Textbook on Taxation Maps (1804)," Netzwerk Topografische Bildmedien, 04/16/2021.

"Rhetorics of Exactitude in^19th Century Forestry," Workshop: Rhetorics of Exactitude, Columbia University New York, 04/10/2020 (Canceled due to Covid-19).

"On Sustainability and Monocultures in the 19th Century," Inaugural Meeting: History of Science Switzerland (HSSuisse), University of Lausanne, 06.03.2020.

"Über Laubsammeln. Nachhaltigkeit und diskriminierte Praktiken," colloquium lecture, Seminar for Media Studies, University of Basel, 17.05.2019.

"Lesen fürs Klima: Naomi Klein," workshop with Mirjam Hähnle at Swiss Sustainability Week, University of Basel, 05.03.2019.

"Genauigkeit bei der Vermessung und Beschreibung fremder Wälder," colloquium lecture, Institute of History, University of Vienna, 09.01.2019.

"The Curated Forest. Seeing Aesthetically and Scientifically," The Making of the Humanities-Conference, University of Amsterdam, 16.11.2018.

"Die Forsteinteilung als nachhaltige Kulturtechnik?", Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Medizin und Technik (GWMT), University of Bochum, 14.09.2018.

"Nachhaltigkeit in forstwissenschafltichen Reiseberichten", PhD workshop "Nachhaltigekit vor 1900", University of Göttingen, 02.03.2018.

Project presentation at the research colloquium "Sustainability Research. Current Topics, Theories and Methods", University of Basel, 12.04.2018.

"Nachhaltigkeit und Kulturtechniken," colloquium lecture, Seminar for Media Studies, University of Basel, 03.11.2017.

"Kuhle Wampe oder wem gehört die Welt? Wirtschaftskirse und politische Initiative im Filmraum," lecture on the occasion of the graduation ceremony of the Institute for History of Art and Image, Humboldt University Berlin, 16.05.2014.

Teaching

"Denkkollektive des Umweltwissens", Proseminar at the Seminar for Media Studies, University of Basel, FS 2023.

„Medienökologien und ihre Praktiken“, Seminar at the Seminar for Media Studies, University of Basel, HS 2022. 

"Was ist nachhaltig?", Proseminar at the Seminar for Media Studies, University of Basel, HS 2018.

"Spekulationskrisen in einer interdisziplinären Betrachtung," project tutorial, Humboldt University Berlin , SoSe 2014 and WiSe 2014/15.

Memberships and networks

Co-founder of the supra-regional think-tank "Klima und Geschichte" 

European Society for Environmental History

Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Medizin und Technik

Netzwerk Topografische Bildmedien

Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Geschichte

Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft

Lisa Cronjäger is a cultural and media historian in the fields of environmental history and the history of science. From 2017 to 2021, she was an associate researcher at the University of Basel in the project Media of Exactitude. In her dissertation, she investigated 19^th-century forest cartography as a cultural technique whose goal was sustainability. In particular, she analyzed the strategies of representation and the role of forest maps in land-use conflicts. She is currently working on a post-doctoral research project on thought collectives of environmental knowledge in the 20^th century and co-organizes the reading group “Climate and History” that fosters discussions between environmental and cultural historians, historians of science and media. Since January 2023, she is a scientific collaborator in the SNSF funded research project: Operative TV: Audiovisual Closed-Circuits from the Military to the Classroom, 1930s-1990s.

What practices were considered to be sustainable in the 19^th century? Drawing on textbooks, travelogues, journal articles, and alternative sources, Lisa Cronjäger's dissertation examines how forestry techniques shaped notions of sustainability and land-use conflicts.

Calculating present and future timber yields as accurately as possible was understood as sustainable forest management from 1800 onward. This objective was to be achieved through forest assessment techniques, methods of estimating the value of forests. Maps and so-called timber yield tables played a major role in this process. Using the study of cultural techniques as a method inspired by science and technology studies and media theory, I analyze the working steps of forest assessment with a special attention to the interactions between notation systems, environments, human and non-human actors. What was the ideal forest envisioned on maps and tables? How did pre-defined rotation periods shape the growth of trees and the appearance of forests? And how did sustainable forest management regulate practices of subsistence, such as forest pasture?

The doctoral thesis sheds light on conceptions of sustainable yield in 19^th century forestry and asks in how far the data practices of forest assessment and cartography legitimized monocultures. As a contribution to the history of science, my research draws on environmental history with a particular focus on subaltern practices, such as forest pasture and agroforestry. Ironically, the practices of forest use that were banned as unsustainable in the 19^th century are nowadays considered to be practices of resilience due to the climate crisis and enforced global inequality.

Supervised by Markus Krajewski, University of Basel and Anna Echterhölter, University of Vienna.

Tallinn Dissertation Prize in European Environmental History. Honorable Mention for the outstanding thesis defended 2021–2022: Periods of Rotation. Forest Maps and Land-Use Practices between Sustainability and Offence