Matthias Schmelzer is an economic historian and transformation researcher. He is currently substituting Professor for Social-Ecological Transformation at the University of Flensburg, heading the Norbert Elias Center for Transformation Design and Research and the master Transformation Studies. Before that, he was visiting professor at the University of Copenhagen, worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, the University of Zurich, and the University of Geneva. His main interests include social-ecological transformation, the global history of capitalism, social and environmental history, climate catastrophe, and alternative economics. He is author of the award-winning “The Hegemony of Growth. The OECD and the Making of the Economic Growth Paradigm” (Cambridge University Press, 2016), co-edited “Degrowth in Movement(s): Exploring pathways for transformation” and is co-author of “The Future Is Degrowth: A Guide to a World beyond Capitalism” (Verso, 2022).
His writing has been featured in the Journal of Global History, Ecological Economics, European Review of History, Globalizations, Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Environmental Values, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Interface, Comparativ, among others. His research has received support from the German Historical Institutes in London, Paris, and Washington, the DAAD, the DFG, and the BMBF, and he has received the Best Dissertation Prize of the International Economic History Association (IEHA), the Friedrich Lütge Prize of German Society for Social and Economic History, the Kapp Research Prize German Association for Ecological Economics, and the Johann-Gustav-Droysen Prize of the Institute for Historical Studies at the Humboldt University Berlin. For many years he has been active in the global justice and climate justice movements, and he worked with the transformative NGO Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas). He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Humboldt University Berlin, University of Zurich, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, University of Vienna, Universitat Autònoma Barcelona, and University of Flensburg.
Recent publications:
• Schmelzer, Matthias. „From Luddites to limits? Towards a systematization of growth critiques in historical perspective“. Globalizations 20, no. 3 (2023): 447–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2022.2106044.
• Schmelzer, Matthias, and Tonny Nowshin. „Ecological Reparations and Degrowth: Towards a Convergence of Alternatives Around World-Making After Growth“. Development (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-023-00360-9.
• Schmelzer, Matthias, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan. The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism. London: Verso, 2022.
• Schmelzer, Matthias. „What Comes After Bretton Woods? Neoliberals Debate and Fight for a Future Monetary Order“. In Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, ed. by Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian, and Philip Mirowski, 197–218. Brooklyn, NY: Verso Books, 2020.
• Burkhart, Corinna, Matthias Schmelzer, and Nina Treu, ed. Degrowth in Movement(s): Exploring pathways for transformation. Winchester: Zer0, 2020.
• Leimgruber, Matthieu, and Matthias Schmelzer, ed. The OECD and the International Political Economy Since 1948. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
• Schmelzer, Matthias. „‘Born in the corridors of the OECD’: the forgotten origins of the Club of Rome, transnational networks, and the 1970s in global history“. Journal of Global History 12, no. 1 (2017): 26–48.
• Borowy, Iris, and Matthias Schmelzer, ed. History of the Future of Economic Growth. Historical roots of current debates on sustainable degrowth. London and New York: Routledge, 2017.
• Schmelzer, Matthias. The Hegemony of Growth. The OECD and the Making of the Economic Growth Paradigm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.