Helge Wendt is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, where he is associated with the project “Globalization of Knowledge.” He received his PhD from the University of Mannheim, where he taught Early Modern History. His research focuses on the history of Christian missions in different colonial contexts, the history and historiography of globalization, and environmental history. He is currently working on the analytic turn of mechanics between traditional models of thought and claims of autonomy; this work is funded by the Collaborative Research Center “Transformations of Antiquity.” He also works on coal as an object of knowledge in global history.