The Joel Tarr Envirotech Article Prize committee has reviewed an impressive set of submissions and is pleased to announce this year’s winner:
Christian Zumbrägel, “Toward an Animated History of Technology: A Conceptual Introduction,” Animal History 2, no. 3 (2026): 5–28, https://doi.org/10.1525/ah.2026.134.
What happens to the history of technology when we take animals seriously as agents rather than as objects of control? Christian Zumbrägel’s compelling essay answers by proposing an “animated history of technology” — one that treats technological change as the product of dynamic interactions among humans, animals, artifacts, and infrastructures. Drawing together environmental history, the history of technology, and human–animal studies, Zumbrägel builds a framework of five analytical perspectives: animals as technologies; technology as a mediator of human–animal relations; technology as part of the biosphere; animals as users and codesigners of technology; and the improvement of technology through animals. He ranges with impressive command over the cases that populate this framework, from fish passages and pack mules to sericulture and digital wildlife tracking. In doing so, he carries Ed Russell’s provocation from the Envirotech listserv a quarter century ago — “Are animals technology?” — into new terrain, extending it toward the further question of when, for how long, and under what conditions animals function as such. Throughout, animals refuse to behave as engineers expect: eels ignore ladders, sparrows enlarge nest holes, jellyfish shut down a nuclear plant. By foregrounding these moments of mismatch, Zumbrägel exposes the temporal complexity of technological change. His essay advances envirotech’s analytical approaches within the pages of Animal History, showing how animals persisted in sociotechnical systems far longer than narratives of progress allow, and how their unruliness exposes the fragility and contingency of technological change. In doing so, it models how attention to animals can cut across the histories of technology, environment, science, and medicine to open new cross-disciplinary paths. It is a worthy recipient of the Joel Tarr Prize.
The Envirotech community warmly congratulates Dr. Zumbrägel for this achievement and thanks the prize committee for their important work!
2026 Prize Committee
- Carl Zimring, Pratt Institute (Chair)
- Martin Meiske, University of Maryland, College Park and the Technical University of Berlin
- Blair Stein, Grand Valley State University