Ute Hasenöhrl is a social and environmental historian at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. An assistant professor at the Department of History and European Ethnology, she has published on the history of social movements and civil society, cultural landscapes and energy issues, as well as on the development and perception of socio-technical systems, institutions, and public goods. She is author of Zivilgesellschaft und Protest. Eine Geschichte der Naturschutz- und Umweltbewegung in Bayern 1945-1980 and co-editor of the volume Urban Lighting, Light Pollution and Society.

Her current project, Empires of Light, Empires of Darkness, is the first to explore the entwined colonial history of artificial light and the night in the British Empire (1830s–1960s), utilizing lighting as a focal point for an investigation of global technological (ex)change and its impacts on society and the environment. The project traces the energy landscape of key colonial cities such as Bombay, Calcutta, Khartoum, or Accra with their urban-rural connections, scrutinizing persistence and change in the utilization of “everyday energies,” as well as in the urban fabric of light and darkness. Investigating the uneven illumination of the British Empire and tracing its colonial legacies, the project not only adds a vital historical dimension to topical discussions on energy deprivation in the Global South and light pollution in the North. It also explores basic questions on the phenomenology of light(ing) and darkness: What do we need artificial light for, how has it changed our way of life and experience of the world, and how has it influenced not only different cultures, but also the environment and our place within it?