Originally trained as a physicist she received her PhD in the history of science and technology. Her research addresses the history of the earth sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries in a cultural and global historical perspective: aviation and atmospheric physics; ocean exploration and physical oceanography; space flight and ecology. Her work on “Spaceship Earth: Envisioning Human Habitats in the Environmental Age” studies the discourse of environmental life support between 1960 and 1990. The book will be published with Pickering & Chatto Publishers, London, in spring 2015.