Cynthia Jean Browne

Cynthia Jean Browne is a Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), Berlin, within Department II 'Knowledge Systems and Collective Life,' where she contributes to the Working Group 'Environmental Knowledge in Times of Crisis.' Her scholarly work bridges anthropology, media studies, and science and technology studies, focusing on the afterlives of resource extraction and the role of documentary practice in environmental knowledge formation and counter-documentation efforts.

• Education: Doctorate in Social Anthropology with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice from Harvard University (2019)

Her research explores exposure as a documentary tool shaping environmental epistemic frameworks and interrogating intersections of colonialism, racial privilege, and ecological crises. She has previously collaborated with institutions such as Ruhr University Bochum's Graduate Research Training Group 'Documentary Practices: Excess and Privation,' Harvard's Film Study Center, and the Sensory Ethnography Lab in Cambridge, MA.

Scientific Awards:

• 2022: Heinrich Winkelmann scholarship (Bergbau Museum, Bochum)
• 2020–2021: Post-doctoral fellowship at RIFS, Potsdam

At MPIWG, she engages in collaborative projects like 'Making Sense of the Environs,' 'Troubling Exposure,' and 'Unknowing Environmental Crisis,' while participating in departmental colloquia and workshops addressing environmental exposure and planetary cultural histories.