Fabian Kröger is a cultural scientist and historian of technology, specialized in the field of mobility studies. His research primarily focuses on the cultural and technical history of the automobile, including the automobile in film, the imaginary of autonomous driving, the future of the automobile and the car as a “vision machine”. His PhD-thesis examined the interplay between cultural images and scientific knowledge of car accidents in France and the United States. His articles had been published in German, English, French and Czech.
He was fellow in a research project on autonomous driving funded by the Daimler and Benz Foundation. As an assistant researcher in the Department of Media Studies at Paderborn University he managed and co-edited a journal issue on the gender dimensions of autonomous driving. He also investigated the imaginary of trains for the Paris-based think-tank Forum Vies Mobiles.
He served for seven years on the Editorial board of Transfers – Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies. Most recently, with support from the University of Bundeswehr Munich, he authored the first comprehensive monograph on the research history of autonomous driving. The book traces five decades of research in the US, Japan and Europe, offering a deep look into long-term developments in the field of vehicle automation, mobile robots and artificial intelligence.
What I’ve done in the past – key accomplishments & experiences:
- Academia: Binational PhD in History & Culture (written in German and French)
- Research projects:
• History of Autonomous Driving – funded by Daimler and Benz Foundation & German Federal Ministry of Defence
• Representation of Railway in Film – for Forum Vies Mobiles (SNCF) - Journalism: 15 years of experience, covering Science & Technology, Mobility, Warfare | ~ 90 published articles
- Public speaking: 23 talks / 3 languages / 5 countries (US, Japan, NL, FR, DE)
- Project & Event Management: Co-organized international conference The Imaginary of Technology (with ENSCI, MINES ParisTech, Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne)
- Editorial Work: Co-Editor of a special journal issue on Gender & Mobility / Image Editor: responsible for visual content management & treatment
- Graphics Design & Artistic Production: Creation of 20 masks 🦄, 11 websites, posters, flyers, book layout.
- Multicultural background: Dual German-French citizenship, based in France since 2006
What I offer
Hard skills
- Research, analysis, synthesis / writing, publishing, editing / visual creation
- Trilingual (German, English, French)
- Academic expertise (Culture, Medias, Technology, Mobility)
- Artistic sensibility & skills: photography, web design, sculpting and painting/drawing
Soft skills
- Ideas, imagination. Seeking depth. Paying attention to details
- Patient, perseverant
- Open, optimistic, diplomatic
- Communication: Able to listen to others. Sense of humor
- Enjoying to work with people from different cultural backgrounds
- Curious, happy to learn new things
Academic expertise & research fields
- Imaginary of technology & culture: Relationship between history, representations, technology and society
- Technical and cultural history of the automobile, especially autonomous driving
- Foresight: future trends, especially mobility / new technologies & innovation
- Visual culture: Semiotic analysis of images, especially film
- Cultural Insights and Cultural shifts : Transformations of Culture & Technology & Society / History: Identification of pivotal years
- History of the research on car accidents & pictorial history of car accidents in film, photography, art
- Transnational Comparison
- Qualitative research
Education
2016 | PhD in History of Technology and Cultural Science, Centre d’Histoire des Techniques, Institut d’histoire moderne et contemporaine (IHMC), CNRS, ENS, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and Humboldt University of Berlin:
Image history and history of knowledge of the car accident
Supervised by Prof. Anne-Françoise Garçon, (France) and Prof. Hartmut Böhme (Germany).
2009 | M.A. in Cultural Science, Political Science and Gender Studies, Humboldt University and Free University of Berlin, Germany:
Car Crash Culture – Der Autounfall und die Transformation des automobilen Versprechens
Supervised by Prof. Hartmut Böhme and Prof. Christian Kassung, Institute for Cultural Theory, Humboldt University of Berlin.
What is driving me
I am motivated by the aim to bring different worlds together – crossing the boundaries between
- academia and industry,
- humanities and hard sciences,
- texts and images,
- content and form.
Every project I worked on had a transnational framework. I really love to work in-between different languages (English, French, German) and countries (France, Germany, US, Japan, Sri Lanka…)
If you need a new team member with cultural research and visualization skills, please feel free to contact me via LinkedIn or ✉️ e-mail:
Detailled CV on request.
Short Bio
Born in 1975 in Berlin, Fabian Kröger studied Cultural Studies, Political Science, and Gender Studies while working as a freelance journalist (1995–2010). His early expertise focused on biotechnology and neuroscience, particularly the cultural representation of genetic research. In 2002, he co-edited a book on these topics.
In 2003, he shifted his focus to the history and future of the automobile, exploring self-driving technology, car design, and cinematic representations of cars. In 2006, he moved to Paris for an internship at Peugeot-Citroën-Renault, researching the vision of accident-free driving and technological acceptance. In Paris, he met his wife, whose Sri Lankan background led him to cover the Sri Lankan civil war (2007–2011) for German online media.
After completing his M.A. (2009) at Humboldt and Freie University Berlin, Kröger pursued a binational PhD (Sorbonne/Humboldt, 2010–2016) on car accident research and its cinematic representation. His work was featured at the Paris Motor Show (2012). He co-organized an international conference on cultural imaginaries of technology (2013) and co-edited an anthology in 2018.
Beyond academia, Kröger worked with think tanks and industry leaders on mobility studies. As a Daimler and Benz Foundation Fellow (2013–2015), his essay on autonomous driving reached over 250,000 readers and inspired a museum exhibition (2020–2022). He also contributed to Forum Vies Mobiles (2013–2017) on the cultural perceptions of rail travel.
After completing his PhD in 2016, Kröger wrote a monograph on the global history of autonomous driving in the United States, Japan and Europe (1950–2000), supported by Bundeswehr University Munich, released by Springer in April 2024. His research has been published in academic journals, books and the press.