Andrew Denning

Andrew Denning studies mobility in twentieth-century Europe and beyond. Using the tools of cultural, technological, and environmental history, he examines the movement of people, goods, ideas, and practices to reconstruct transnational and global relationships.

 Dr. Denning has published articles in a wide range of publications, including American Historical Review, The Atlantic, Environmental History, Journal of Modern History (forthcoming), Technology & Culture, and Central European History. His first book, Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History (University of California Press, 2015), examines the relationship between skiers and the Alpine environment since the late nineteenth century 

His current book manuscript, titled “Automotive Empire: How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa,” argues that European powers used road infrastructure and motor vehicles to develop a distinct form of "automotive empire" in Africa. The study's trans-imperial approach draws connections among Belgian, British, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese colonies to show that the technological and infrastructural imperatives of motor vehicles and roads in Africa shaped the administration of empire, social relations between colonizer and colonized, and the culture of the automobile in Europe. He is also co-editor, with Heidi J.S. Tworek (University of British Columbia), of the 40-chapter The Interwar World (forthcoming, Routledge, 2023), which offers the first comprehensive, global treatment of the tempestuous interwar decades.

Dr. Denning held a fellowship at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada before coming to KU, and his work has been supported by grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, American Philosophical Society, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), International Olympic Committee, and Wolfsonian-FIU, as well as the Hall Center for the Humanities and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Research Excellence Initiative at the University of Kansas.

Dr. Denning encourages potential graduate applicants interested in working on twentieth-century western Europe and/or any of his thematic areas of expertise to contact him about graduate study at KU.