Download a CV here
Employment
2014-17
Director, Leeds Humanities Research Institute, University of Leeds
2010‒
Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds
2006-10
Senior Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds
2006-8
Chair, Division of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds
2000-6
Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds
1999-00
Charles and Katharine Darwin Research Fellow, Darwin College, University of Cambridge
Education
PhD, 2000
History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
MPhil, 1996
History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
BA, 1992
History, Rutgers College, Rutgers University
Honours (Selected)
2022‒26
STEM Trustee, Science Museum Group
2017‒19
Major Research Fellowship, Leverhulme Trust
2016
Thomas S. Hall Lecture in History and Philosophy of Science, Washington University in St. Louis
2015
Innes Lecture in the History of Science, John Innes Centre, Norwich
2015
Darwin Memorial Lecture, Shrewsbury
2012‒13
Midcareer Fellowship, British Academy
2010
Suzanne J. Levinson Prize, History of Science Society, for best book in the history of the life sciences and natural history (for The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language)
2010
Visiting Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
2004
Research Fellowship, Leverhulme Trust
1999
Singer Prize, British Society for the History of Science, for best essay by an early-career researcher (for “Morgan’s Canon, Garner’s Phonograph, and the Evolutionary Origins of Language and Reason”)
Service (Selected)
2022-26
Board, Science Museum Group; Member of the Science Museum Advisory Board and the Collections and Research Committee
2019‒
Board, Ilkley Literature Festival (representing the University of Leeds)
2019‒2021
President, International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (previously President-Elect, 2017-9)
2018‒
Lisa Jardine Research Grants Committee, Royal Society of London
2014‒16
President, British Society for the History of Science (previously Vice President, 2013‒4, and again in 2016‒7)
2014‒16
Suzanne J. Levinson Prize Sub-Committee, History of Science Society (chair in 2016)
2012‒17
Editor in Chief, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
2009‒13
Council, International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology
2005‒10
Book Reviews Editor, British Journal for the History of Science
2005‒9
Council, British Society for the History of Science
PhD Students
2022‒
Frank Cui, “Byron and the ‘Epicurean system’: His Negotiations with His Contemporary Intellectual Culture.” (Jointly supervised with John Whale, School of English)
2021‒
Stefan Bernhardt-Radu, “Julian Huxley’s Developmental-Evolutionary Genetics in the 1920s.” (Faculty funding)
2021
Ageliki Lefkaditou. “Naturalising the Nation: Physical Anthropology in Greece, 1880s-1950s.” (Partial School funding; currently postdoctoral research fellow, University of Oslo)
2021
Alex Aylward. “R. A. Fisher’s The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection: Origins, Publication, Reception, Legacies.” (University scholarship, with a pre-doctoral fellowship at the APS Library; currently a lecturer in history of science, University of Oxford)
2021
Clare Coleman. “Plant Hybridity Before Mendelism: Diversity and Debate in British Botany, 1837 – 1899,” building on an earlier MRes dissertation with me. (AHRC CDP funding; jointly supervised with Jonathan Topham; currently a Digital Education Manager at the University of Leeds)
2021
Nicola Williams. “Biological Research after the Electron Microscope: The Case of Irene Manton,” building on an earlier MRes dissertation with me. (School scholarship; jointly supervised with Graeme Gooday)
2020
Gonzalo Talavera Cabrejo. “Max Isserlin (1879-1941) and the Possibilities for Psychiatry in Imperial and Weimar Germany.” (Jointly supervised with Mike Finn; currently teaching philosophy in Lima, Peru)
2019
Emily Herring. “Henri Bergson’s Creative Evolution and 20th-Century British Biology.” (University scholarship, with pre-doctoral fellowships from the APS Library and Linda Hall Library; jointly supervised with Laurent Loisin, CNRS, Paris; currently a freelance writer and editor)
2019
Helen Piel. “John Maynard Smith and the Fact(s) of Evolution: A Study of Scientific Working Life in Post-War Britain.” (AHRC CDP funding; jointly supervised with Jonathan Pledge, British Library; currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Deutches Museum, Munich)
2019
Mark Steadman. “A History of the Scientific Collections of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society’s Museum in the Nineteenth Century: Acquiring, Interpreting & Presenting the Natural World in the English Industrial City” (AHRC CDP funding; jointly supervised with Jonathan Topham and Clare Brown, Leeds Museums & Galleries)
2017
Matt Holmes. “From Biological Revolution to Biotech Age: Plant Biotechnology in British Agriculture since 1950.” (AHRC CDA funding; jointly supervised with Tina Barsby, National Institute of Agricultural Botany; currently postdoctoral fellow in environmental history at the University of Stavanger)
2016
Hongjin Liu. “Data and the Development of Research Methods in the Science of Human Emotional Expression from Darwin to Klineberg.” (China Scholarship Council funding; currently a postdoctoral fellow at Tsinghua University, China)
2016
Rob Meckin. “Making Research Translatable: Articulating and Shaping Synthetic Biology in the UK.” (White Rose funding; jointly supervised with Suzanne Molyneux-Hodgson [lead supervisor]; currently a Presidential Fellow at the University of Manchester)
2015
Jordan Bartol. “Kind Historicism & Biological Ontology.” (University scholarship; jointly supervised with Juha Saatsi)
2014
Dominic Berry. “Genetics, Statistics, and Regulation at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany, 1919-1969.” (AHRC CDA funding; jointly supervised with Tina Barsby, National Institute of Agricultural Botany)
2014
Juan Manuel Rodriguez Caso. “Anthropology in Transition: A Study of the Sciences of Man at the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1866–1870” (CONACYT scholarship; jointly supervised with Jonathan Topham; currently teaching science and HPS in Mexico City, Mexico)
2013
Emanuele Archetti. “Epistemic Horizons in Scientific Inquiry and Debate.” (University funding)
2012
Mike Finn. “The West Riding Lunatic Asylum and the Making of the Modern Brain Sciences in the Nineteenth Century” (AHRC scholarship; jointly supervised with Adrian Wilson; currently Lecturer in History of Science, and Director of the University of Leeds Museum of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Leeds)
2012
Maurizio Esposito. “Between Holism and Reductionism: Organismic Inheritance and the Neo-Kantian Biological Tradition in Britain and the USA, 1890-1940.” (School scholarship; currently a Faculty member at the Federal University of ABC, Brazil and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Lisbon)
2012
Jamie Stark. “Industrial Illness in Cultural Context: La Maladie de Bradford in Local, National and Global Settings, 1878-1919.” (AHRC CDA funding; jointly supervised with Adrian Wilson and Monty Losowsky, Thackray Museum; currently Professor of Medical Humanities, University of Leeds)
2012
Berris Charnley. “Agricultural Science, Plant Breeding and the Emergence of a Mendelian System in Britain, 1880-1930.” (AHRC project funding; jointly supervised with Graeme Gooday; after postdoctoral fellowships at Exeter, Griffiths and Oxford, currently a research fellow at the University of Queensland)
2011
Efram Sera-Shriar. “Beyond the Armchair: Early Observational Practices and the Making of British Anthropology, 1813–1871” (School funding; jointly supervised with Jonathan Topham; currently Associate Professor in the History and Culture of the English-Speaking World, University of Copenhagen)
2009
Chris Renwick. “The British Debate about the Identity of Sociology 1876-1908.” (AHRC scholarship; jointly supervised with Graeme Gooday; currently Professor of Modern History, University of York)
2008
Shane Glackin. “The Role of the Fact/Value Distinction in Modern Moral Life.” (AHRC scholarship; jointly supervised with Mark Nelson and then Chris Megone; currently Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Exeter)