Benjamin Furst is a cartographer and historian at the Centre de recherche sur les économies, les sociétés, les arts et les techniques (CRESAT – UR 3436). He holds a PhD in environmental history from the Université de Haute-Alsace and the Université de Montréal. His work focuses on the interaction between political powers and the environment in the context of the conquest and administration of remote margins and territories, particularly the French colonies from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.
After working on the role of hydrographic networks in the appropriation of space in the early modern period, he is now focusing on the environmental consequences of nuclear testing in French Polynesia, and in particular the way in which the nuclear sector has transformed the environment beyond the radioactivity of the sites themselves. He recently published ‘Un deuxième contact? Histoire et mémoires du CEP’ with Renaud Meltz and Alexis Vrignon.
He is also CRESAT’s cartographer, supporting the laboratory’s collective projects including GeoNUFE on issues of spatial representation and data mapping.