Biographical Summary

Christiane Hoth de Olano is a historian of Latin America and the Caribbean specializing in environmental history and the history of knowledge and science. Since June 2026, she has been a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. She received her Ph.D. from KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in 2024 and has held academic appointments at the University of Bern and UniDistance Suisse in Brig, Switzerland. Prior to joining the German Historical Institute, she was affiliated with the Centre for Empire Studies (CES) at the University of Münster.

Her research examines the production and use of knowledge in frontier and imperial contexts, with a particular focus on the long nineteenth century. Her first monograph, Frontier Medicine: Practices, Knowledge, and Science in Southern Chile, 1883–1939, is forthcoming with Brill in the series Cultural Dynamics of Science. The book builds on her doctoral dissertation, for which she received the Maximiliana Kocher Prize. Her publications address missionary encounters, exhibitions, and collections, drawing on approaches from material culture studies and the history of photography.

Her current postdoctoral research at the German Historical Institute explores the environmental history of water in the imperial Caribbean during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More broadly, she is interested in community knowledge and engaged approaches to history, particularly in connecting academic research with university teaching and public engagement.