Dr. Copper

Stanislav Manca is an independent documentary filmmaker specializing in archaeology, history, and science. He has directed several travel films set in various countries around the world, as well as three historical film series—“The Bronze Age,” “The Voyages of Copper,” and “Dr. Copper.” He enjoys traveling and is interested in people’s stories and the history of the world. His passions include nature, mountain hiking, and road cycling. He has traveled to many countries and participated in expeditions to the Andes, the Himalayas, Alaska, and the Caucasus. He is a graduate of the University of Economics, where he majored in information technology.

Sebastian Felten is a historian of science, finance, and bureaucracy in early modern Europe. He is Tenure Track Professor of Early Modern History of Science at the Department of History at the University of Vienna and was a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin (MPIWG) between 2015 and 2018. He is the PI of the ERC Project SCARCE. His current research explores knowledge about nature through a focus on mineral resources as they featured in metallurgy, mineralogy, economics, and ergonomics. He has studied commerce and bureaucracy using the tools of historical epistemology to build bridges between the history of science and social, cultural and economic history. His objective for the next years is to apply this integrated approach to understand the peculiar rationality of early modern resource extraction in Central Europe, which was often highly contradictory. 

Dr. Anka Steffen is a historian whose research focuses on global economic interconnections in Eastern Central Europe. Since May 2024, she has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Economic and Social History at the University of Vienna, specializing in global history. Previously, she taught at the University of Leipzig and served as a fellow at Harvard University and a research assistant at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). In her dissertation, she examined the interconnections of transatlantic trade in Silesian linen as well as the associated labor regimes of slavery and serfdom in the early modern period. Her habilitation project focuses on the industrial development of Central Europe in the context of imperial-colonial exploitation processes, ca. 1850–1950. Her book Am leinenen Faden. Schlesiens Wirtschaft im globalen Kontext der frühen Neuzeit [Hanging by a Thread: Silesia’s Economy in the Global Context of the Early Modern Period] was published in 2025.

Peter Konečný studied History and History of Science at the University of Regensburg and History and Cultural Studies at the Comenius University in Bratislava, obtaining his PhD in 2018 with a dissertation on early modern travelogues written by foreign mining experts visiting the Habsburg Empire.

Peter’s current research project deals with transfer of knowledge on mining in eighteenth-century Central and Eastern Europe. He is also preparing the edition of a travel diary manuscript from mid-seventeenth century covering a journey from Prague to the mining towns in today’s Central Slovakia.