Nadin Heé is currently Professor for Modern Japanese History in Global Perspective, Director of the Centre Global Dynamics, and co-leading the Centre for Transimperial History at Leipzig University. Previously, she has held professorships for Global History at the Free University of Berlin, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and Osaka University, alongside visiting fellowships at Kyoto University, Tokyo University, Academia Sinica in Taiwan, and Munich University.
Her principal areas of research sit at the intersection of empire studies, global environmental history, and science and technology studies, with a strong focus on East Asia and the Pacific. A central conceptual pillar of her work is transimperial history—an approach that looks beyond the boundaries of single empires to examine the entanglements, shared knowledge, and resource flows between different imperial formations. Her book, Imperiales Wissen und koloniale Gewalt: Japans Herrschaft in Taiwan 1895-1945 (2012), was awarded the JaDe-Prize for analyzing Colonial Taiwan in a framework of imperial formations formed by multiple empires – including the Qing.
Currently, she is applying a transimperial approach to projects examining the exploration and exploitation of marine resources in the Pacific. By tracing how tuna became a highly commodified “global common,” her research reveals the major role of the Japanese empire within empire studies, challenging traditional narratives by treating the sea not merely as a flat surface for imperial transit or trade, but as a three-dimensional space of extraction and volumetric sovereignty.
