Etienne S. Benson is a historian specializing in the intersections of science, politics, and the environment, with a focus on the United States and Europe from the eighteenth century to the present.
Together with Dagmar Schäfer, he currently serves as a Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.
Prior to that, he received an AB in cognitive neuroscience from Harvard College in 1999 and an MA in psychology from Stanford University in 2001.
[3][4] He is the author of Wired Wilderness: Technologies of Tracking and the Making of Modern Wildlife, Johns Hopkins University Press, (2010)[5][6][7] and Surroundings: A History of Environments and Environmentalisms (2020),[8][9] which examine the intersections of technology, environmentalism, and wildlife conservation.
[10] Through his interdisciplinary scholarship published in various academic journals and through his public engagement, Benson has made significant contributions in exploring human-animal relations, conservation history, environmentalism, and the development of Earth and environmental sciences[11]