Gabrielle Hecht


Gabrielle Hecht is a historian and scholar of science and technology studies who specializes in the history of mining, environmental justice in Africa, and nuclear technology. She is Research Associate at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in South Africa. She developed the concepts of "technopolitics," "nuclearity," and "residual governance" in science and technology studies, and has written on the technopolitics of nuclear power and uranium mining in Africa.
Hecht's scholarship has received awards including the 2024 African Studies Association Best Book Award, the 2016 Rachel Carson Prize, and the 2012 Martin A. Klein Prize in African History. Her work has been translated into nine languages.

Education and early career

Hecht was born in 1965 in Puerto Rico. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986, followed by a Master of Arts degree in History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988. She completed her PhD in History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992.
She began her academic career at Stanford University, serving as Acting Assistant Professor in the Department of History from 1992 to 1993, then as Assistant Professor from 1993 to 1998, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of French and Italian.

Academic positions

In 1999, Hecht moved to the University of Michigan, where she spent 18 years in the History Department. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1998 and to Professor in 2011. At Michigan, she co-founded the Program in Science, Technology, and Society with her partner, Paul N. Edwards, and served as its Director from 2013 to 2015 and 2016 to 2017. She also served as Associate Director of Michigan's African Studies Center from 2013 to 2014 and participated in the Program in Anthropology and History.
In 2017, Hecht returned to Stanford University as Professor of History and Professor of Anthropology. From 2017 to 2024, she held the Frank Stanton Foundation Professor of Nuclear Security position and served as Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Her affiliations at Stanford included the Center for African Studies, the Program in Science, Technology, and Society, the Center for Global Ethnography, the Program on Urban Studies, and the Program in History and Philosophy of Science.
Hecht maintains her role as Research Associate at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research at Wits University in South Africa, a position she has held since 2024.
Throughout her career, Hecht has held visiting positions at Sciences Po, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, the University of Oslo, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the University of Melbourne, and the Royal Institute of Technology.

Research and scholarly contributions

Nuclear technology and technopolitics

Hecht's first book, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II, analyzed how France embedded nuclear policy in reactor technology and nuclear culture in reactor operations. The book introduced the concept of "technopolitics"—the strategic practice of designing or using technology to constitute, embody, or enact political goals. This work received the Henry Baxter Adams Prize in European history from the American Historical Association in 1999 and the Edelstein Prize from the Society for the History of Technology in 2001. It was translated into French as Le rayonnement de la France.

Nuclearity and African uranium

Hecht's 2012 book Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade analyzed Africa's place in the global nuclear order. The book introduced the concept of "nuclearity"—the technopolitical status of being nuclear, which is determined not by the presence of radioactive materials alone but by the assemblage of instruments, data, technological systems, infrastructures, national agencies, international organizations, experts, and media attention. Hecht argued that nuclearity is unevenly distributed globally, with consequences for which workers, communities, and nations receive protection, regulation, compensation, and recognition.
The book focused on uranium mines and miners in Gabon, Madagascar, Niger, Namibia, and South Africa, documenting how the global nuclear order depends on African uranium while denying African workers and communities the protections associated with nuclear status. Being Nuclear received several awards:
  • Co-winner, 2012 Martin A. Klein Prize in African History, American Historical Association
  • 2013 Robert K. Merton Book Award, American Sociological Association
  • 2014 Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship
  • 2016 Rachel Carson Prize, Society for Social Studies of Science
  • Honorable Mention, 2013 Herskovits Prize, African Studies Association
An abridged French version was published as Uranium Africain, une histoire globale.

Residual governance

Hecht's 2023 book, Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures, analyzed the environmental and health impacts of gold and uranium mining in South Africa's Gauteng province. The book introduced the concept of "residual governance," defined as a trifecta:
  1. The governance of waste and discards
  2. Minimalist governance that uses simplification, ignorance, and delay as tactics
  3. Governance that treats people and places as waste and wastelands
Hecht argued that residual governance is an instrument of modern racial capitalism and an accelerant of the Anthropocene. The book documented how communities, experts, and artists fight for infrastructural and environmental justice in the face of abandoned mines, radioactive tailings, and toxic pollution. Rather than focusing on corporate and government archives, Hecht centered the perspectives of scientists, community leaders, activists, journalists, urban planners, and artists who have resisted residual governance.
Published in open access, Residual Governance received several awards:
The book has been translated into Spanish as Gobernanza residual: Como Sudáfrica presagia futuros planetarios and will appear in French as Gouvernance résiduelle: le futur de la planète vu de l'Afrique du Sud.

Latest research

Hecht's current research project, Inside-Out Earth, studies the cumulative wastes of energy systems at four sites: the Norwegian Arctic, Abidjan in Côte d'Ivoire, Mpumalanga in South Africa, and the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Conducted in collaboration with South African visual ethnographer and artist Potšišo Phasha, the project studies how residual governance operates in these locations and how people live with and within resulting wastes. Essays from this project have appeared in Cultural Anthropology, Aeon, Somatosphere, and other venues.
Hecht's 2018 article "Interscalar Vehicles for the African Anthropocene: On Waste, Temporality, and Violence" in Cultural Anthropology was the most downloaded article in the journal in 2018 and received the 2019 General Anthropology Division Prize for Exemplary Cross-Field Scholarship from the American Anthropological Association.

Awards and honors

Book Awards:
  • 2024 Best Book Award, African Studies Association
  • 2024 E. Ohnuki-Tierney Book Award for Historical Anthropology, American Anthropological Association
  • 2024 PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences
  • 2024 PROSE Award in Government and Politics
  • 2016 Rachel Carson Prize, Society for Social Studies of Science
  • 2014 Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize
  • 2013 Robert K. Merton Prize, American Sociological Association
  • 2012 Martin A. Klein Prize in African History, American Historical Association
  • 2001 Edelstein Prize, Society for the History of Technology
  • 1999 Henry Baxter Adams Prize, American Historical Association
Fellowships:
Article Awards:
  • 2019 General Anthropology Division Prize for Exemplary Cross-Field Scholarship, American Anthropological Association
Hecht's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the South African and Dutch national research foundations.

Selected publications

Books

  • '. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023.
  • * Spanish translation: '. Qillqa, 2025.
  • * French translation: Gouvernance résiduelle: le futur de la planète vu de l'Afrique du Sud. Éditions EHESS, forthcoming 2026.
  • Uranium Africain, une histoire globale. Paris: Le Seuil, 2016.
  • Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press and Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2012.
  • Entangled Geographies: Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011.
  • The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998; 2nd edition 2009.
  • * French translation: Le rayonnement de la France: Énergie nucléaire et identité nationale après la seconde guerre mondiale. Paris: Éditions de la Découverte, 2004; Éditions Amsterdam, 2014.
  • Technologies of Power: Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.