Andrew Denning

Andrew Denning studies mobility, technology and infrastructure in modern European and global history, with particular expertise in the French, German and Italian empires of the 19th and 20th centuries. 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. 

His most recent book, Automotive Empire: How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa, appeared with Cornell University Press in 2024. It analyzes how European powers used road infrastructure and motor vehicles to develop a distinct form of "automotive empire" in Africa between 1895 and 1940. The study's transimperial 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 colonial governance and social relations, as well as the culture of the automobile in Europe. 

His first book, Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History (University of California Press, 2015), examined the relationship between skiers and the Alpine environment since the late 19th century, showing how the sport of skiing modernized the Alps in material and cultural terms in the 20th century. 

He is also co-editor, with Heidi J.S. Tworek (University of British Columbia), of The Interwar World (Routledge, 2024), which gathers over 50 contributors on 40 subjects to offer the first comprehensive, global treatment of the tempestuous interwar decades. Drawing from this project, Denning and Tworek have written an article that examines the challenges and prospects of historical periodization in global history (forthcoming in Past & Present). 

Dr. Denning has also published articles in a wide range of publications, including American Historical Review (see also here), The Atlantic, Environmental History, Journal of Modern History, Technology & Culture, and Central European History. 

He is currently conducting research for a transimperial, book-length study of colonial projects of technological and infrastructural “development” and modernization in Africa. 

His work has been supported by grants and fellowships 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. In 2024, he received the KU Chancellor’s University Scholarly Achievement Award. 

Denning serves as director of the Museum Studies Program at KU and as an associate review editor (Western Europe) for American Historical Review.