Alexander C. T. Geppert

Alexander C.T. Geppert is a space and planetary historian, and a European history professor at New York University, jointly appointed by NYU New York and NYU Shanghai. He has four degrees, including a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. From 2010 to 2016 Alexander Geppert directed the Emmy Noether research group ‘The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century’ at Freie Universität Berlin. He has held long–term fellowships in Berkeley, Paris, Vienna, Essen, London, Harvard, Cambridge and Munich. He has also held the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, served as the Eleanor Searle Visiting Professor of History at the California Institute of Technology in Los Angeles, and was Scholar-in-Residence at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. In 2026, he is in residence at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg – Institute for Advanced Study in Delmenhorst. Alexander Geppert’s numerous book publications include the award-winning Fleeting Cities: Imperial Expositions in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (2013) and a trilogy on European Astroculture, consisting of Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century (ed., 2018), Limiting Outer Space: Astroculture after Apolle (ed., 2020), and Militarizing Outer Space: Astroculture, Dystopia and the Cold War (co-ed., 2021). At present, he is at work on two monographs, Astroculture: Europe in the Age of Space (under contract with MIT Press), and a sequel, Planetizing Earth: An Extra-Terrestrial History of the Global Present. He also hosts the ‘NYU Space Talks: History, Politics, Astroculture’ lecture series (www.space-talks.com).