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Stefan Huebner (Hübner) is Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute. He is also the President of the Society of Floating Solutions (Singapore) / SFSS and the Vice-Chair of the International Scientific Committee for the annual World Conference on Floating Solutions. His research covers the industrialization and urbanization of marine waters since the mid-twentieth century, with a strong focus on Asian cities and regions. His recent second monograph, Earth’s Amphibious Transformation. The History and Present of the Oceanic Anthropocene (Cambridge University Press, 2026), is the first history of the oceanic Anthropocene, referring to the epoch in which human activities have caused changes in the Earth system, such as climate change, ocean acidification, biosphere degradation, and overfertilization. The book explores the twentieth-century extension of human habitats into oceanic spaces, showing how the effects of this amphibious transformation have followed a very different trajectory from human-driven change on land, in terms of both socioeconomic development and environmental degradation. The extension of the human habitat through artificial islands, such as seabed-fixed and floating structures, has granted vertical access to Earth’s different spatial layers, from the fossil fuels beneath the seabed to outer space. The book asks why this transformation occurred; how it has been shaped by political, economic, and environmental factors; and how it has altered marine environments. A deeper understanding of Earth’s amphibious transformation compels us to reconsider the history and future of climate change, sea level rise, energy transitions, human–marine species interactions, globalization, and even urbanization, including floating cities. This book is freely available as open access on Cambridge Core.

His most recent articles on ocean industrialization and urbanization were published in Climate Risk Management, Ocean and Coastal Management, Journal of Global History, Modern Asian Studies, and Environmental History. He also edited a volume on “Oceanic Japan,” featuring two chapters written by him (on the periodization of Japan’s oceanic history and on Japan’s platform archipelago) and 20 more chapters contributed by leading experts on oceanic topics. Recent news articles were released in Channel NewsAsia, Nature, and AsiaGlobal Online.