Ingo Heidbrink (born 1968) is a German maritime historian who is Professor of History with a specialization on Maritime History at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.He is specialized on Fisheries History, Traditional Watercraft and Museum Ships, Methodology of Maritime History and interdisciplinary research projects. Since Summer 2021 he is Chair of the Department of History at Old Dominion University.[1]
Heidbrink studied Social and Economic History at the University of Hamburg (Germany), where he got his M.A. in 1994 and his Dr.phil. in 1999. His doctoral thesis on German inland-waterway tanker-shipping was supervised by Ulrich Troitzsch as well as his earlier MA-thesis on traditional watercraft. In 2004 he finished his habilitation (German professorial degree) at the University of Bremen (Germany) with a thesis on the history of German deep-sea fishing industry in the 20th century.[2] After positions at various maritime museums in Germany Heidbrink became the founding head of the department of fisheries history at the German Maritime Museum / Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum in Bremerhaven in 1996. From 2000 to 2002 he was a research fellow at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study (HWK) in Delmenhorst.[3] Hereafter he returned to the German Maritime Museum. Since 2000 he taught at the University of Bremen where he became Privatdozent in 2004 and one of the Principal Investigators of the Bremen International Graduate School for Marine Sciences – Global Change in the Marine Realm (GLOMAR). In 2003 and 2007 he was guest lecturer at the Ilisimatusarfik, the University of Greenland. In 2008 he was appointed Associate Professor for Maritime History at the History Department of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, where he was Graduate Program Director of the history program from 2009 to 2013. In summer 2010 he was promoted to Professor of History.[4] In addition to his position at Old Dominion University he is Honorary Research Fellow at the Maritime Historical Studies Centre (Blaydes Maritime Centre) at the University of Hull, UK.[5]
Heidbrink has been selected as a research fellow at the Rachel Carson Center at the University of Munich, a newly established federal think tank for environmental history.[6] Beside his academic career he holds a masters license for commercial watercraft on inland waterways and is an appointed surveyor for historical watercraft and museum ships in Germany.
Heidbrink’s scholarly work is dedicated to several sub-topics of maritime history:
Since the mid-1990s he dealt intensively with the theoretical framework behind the restoration and operation of museum ships and traditional vessels. His most important contribution to this particular field of research was that he authored together with Arne Gotved and John Robinson the “Barcelona Charter – European Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of traditional ships in operation” which was adopted by the European association of owners of such vessels (European Maritime Heritage) in 2003 and is recognized as an international standard for such vessels by many European governments.
Towards the end of the 1990s Heidbrink’s research was mainly dedicated to the history of European inland-waterway navigation and his book on inland-waterway tanker navigation became standard for this field of research.[7]
Since 2000 his publications mainly focus on fisheries history and the Law of the Sea and especially his book on the fishing conflicts of the 20th century was discussed controversial, because he stated that the European distant-water fisheries of the late 19th and 20th century have been a kind of common economic colonialism in the North Atlantic area.
Beside this concrete research he dealt with the methodological improvement of maritime history and is part of a movement that wants to widen the scope of maritime history to a universal history of the interaction of humans and the oceans.[8] As a part of this methodological work he was involved in the design of new scholarly educational schemes that combine marine sciences with the humanities and social sciences and were realized for example in the Bremen International Graduate School for Marine Sciences – Global Change in the Marine Realm (GLOMAR) or the Mitigation and Adaption Research Institute (MARI) at Old Dominion University.[9]
Heidbrink is involved in a variety of international organizations dedicated to research in Maritime History. In 2005 he was elected to Assistant Secretary General of the International Commission for Maritime History (ICMH). In September 2009 he took over as Acting Secretary General of the ICMH after the previous Secretary General stepped back from the office and was elected to Secretary General in August 2010.[10] He is president of the North Atlantic Fisheries History Association (NAFHA) and an Expert Member of the International Polar Heritage Committee (IPHC),[11] one of the 28 International Scientific Committees within ICOMOS.
The maritime historian Ingo Heidbrink should not be mistaken for Ingo Heidbrink of Switzerland, who seems to be involved in the amusement industry.