Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Dissertation and essay supervisors

This is a list of people who are willing to supervise Part II dissertations, Part III essays and dissertations, and MPhil essays and dissertations, toegther with the topics they are prepared to supervise.

Part II students should seek the support of the Part II Manager, their Director of Studies and/or the Paper Manager in the area under which their proposed topic falls in the first instance.

You may find it helpful to search this page (Ctrl+F on Windows, ⌘F on Mac) for key words associated with the topics that interest you.

Teaching Officers and Teaching Associates

Anna Alexandrova

General philosophy of science and any topic in philosophy of the social and psychological sciences, especially:

  • Models in science
  • Causation and laws
  • Well-being, happiness
  • Explanation and understanding
  • Science, values and policy
  • Rational choice theory and its applications in social science
  • Social and economic engineering
  • John Stuart Mill
  • History of economics
  • Philosophy of history and historiography
  • Ethics and political philosophy
  • Contextualism in epistemology and ethics

Hasok Chang

  • General philosophy of science, including realism, reductionism, explanation, demarcation, progress and confirmation
  • History and philosophy of physics
  • History and philosophy of chemistry
  • Philosophy of scientific practice
  • Pragmatism
  • Pluralism
  • Historiography and HPS methodology

Karin Ekholm

Early Modern European science and medicine, especially:

  • Anatomy and physiology
  • Maintaining health and treating illness
  • Theories and methods of investigating human and animal generation
  • Diseases of women, pregnancy and birth
  • Representation and images

John Forrester

History and philosophy of psychoanalysis and human sciences:

  • Freud
  • History and philosophy of psychoanalysis
  • History of psychiatry in 19th and 20th centuries
  • History of psychology in late-19th and 20th centuries
  • Some topics in history of other human sciences: anthropology and sociology
  • Selected topics in history of thermodynamics
  • Selected topics in history of modern medicine
  • Evolutionary theory and the human and social sciences
  • Gender and the sciences
  • Biomedical ethics: contemporary issues and history of
  • Placebos, trust, deceit
  • Reasoning in clinical sciences
  • Reasoning in cases
  • Law and the sciences
  • 20th-century French philosophy, psychoanalysis and textual theory since World War II, including Sartre (bits), Lacan, Derrida
  • French tradition in history of science: Bachelard et al.
  • Michel Foucault
  • Thomas Kuhn's history of the sciences
  • History of language theory in medicine, anatomy, philology
  • Grand theories in the history of science e.g. Merton, Price, Needham, Braudel
  • Science in Cambridge

Nick Hopwood

History of medicine and biology since 1800, especially in Germany, Britain and the United States; visual communication and the media of science:

  • Reproductive sciences, technologies and medicine, including the still largely unexplored history of in vitro fertilization and other Cambridge innovations and institutions
  • Visual communication and the media of science, e.g. book illustration, icons of evolution, models and other visual aids, microscopical techniques, training for scientific and medical artists, portraits, anatomy museums, exhibitions
  • Other topics in the history of laboratory biology, evolutionary biology and medicine

Nick Jardine

Historiography of the sciences, early-modern astronomy and cosmology, history of natural history:

  • Historiography of the sciences – any number of topics including:
    the founding fathers and mothers (Whewell, Duhem, Sarton, Koyré, Metzger, etc.); polemical uses of history of the sciences; problems of historical interpretation; anachronism; problems of historical explanation and narration; theories of social construction, network formation, mediated exchange of knowledge, etc.; cultural history of the sciences; history of science in relation to anthropology, history of the book, cultural geography, etc.
  • History of natural history:
    any number of topics concerning cabinets and museums; travelling and collecting; natural history and natural theology; popular natural history; curiosities and monstrosities, etc.
  • Early-modern astronomy and cosmology:
    lots of topics on the battle of the world-systems, the places of astronomy in early-modern culture, astronomical imagery, etc.
  • Kant and the Kantian heritage

Lauren Kassell

History of early modern medicine, natural philosophy, and the occult sciences (astrology, alchemy, magic etc.)

Dr Kassell is on leave in 2011–12, but if you are interested in pursuing doctoral research in these areas, please email her.

Tim Lewens

On leave in Michaelmas Term

Topics in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of risk and bioethics:

  • Metaphysics and epistemology: properties, causation, colour, knowledge, scepticism
  • Philosophy of science: scientific realism, natural kinds, laws of nature, physicalism
  • Philosophy of biology: functions, adaptationism, selection, universal darwinism, species, memes, units and levels of selection, probabilistic explanation, genetic explanation
  • Risk: risk and value, the precautionary principle, technocracy
  • Bioethics: disease, behavioural genetics, gene patenting, ethics of bioethics, biodiversity

Eleanor Robson

On leave in 2011–12

Simon Schaffer

  • Social history of physical sciences
  • History of experimental natural philosophy
  • Astronomical and navigational sciences between 1700 and 1900
  • Sociology of scientific knowledge

Jim Secord

  • Social history of science since 1750, life and earth sciences
  • Public science from the French Revolution to the First World War, esp. in Britain, France and the United States: exhibitions, zoos, education, museums, scientific architecture, careers, textbooks, public lecturing, mechanics institutes, children's science, images of the scientist, government support for science, science in periodicals and newspapers
  • Scientific books, publishing and history of science communication (mostly British, 1790–1960): histories of individual firms (e.g. Cambridge University Press, Penguin), changing nature of authorship, history of the scientific article, history of scientific libraries, development of scientific periodicals, techniques for scientific illustration and other aspects of production
  • Science and literature, esp. Romantic and early Victorian: literary readings of scientific works, travel literature, science and the novel, autobiography
  • Religion and science in the 19th century: conversion experiences, denominational responses to science (e.g. early geology, astronomy, cosmology), Darwinian debates, atheism and science
  • History of earth sciences, 18th century to present: early theories of the earth, mineral collecting and prospecting, geological mapping, origins of geological timescale, debates about biblical flood, volcanoes, debates about uniformity and catastrophe, government surveys, oceanographic exploration, reception of continental drift, history of vertebrate and invertebrate palaeontology, history of public attitudes to geology
  • Imperialism and science (mostly 19th century): exploration, expeditions, surveys, botanical gardens, geological and natural history surveys, etc; science and race; science and public support for empire; imperial expositions and fairs; science, religion and empire, geography and empire

Liba Taub

History of scientific instruments and material culture of science; early (particularly ancient Greek and Roman) science:

  • Early (particularly ancient Greek and Roman) science
    • Especially physics, cosmology, astronomy, harmonics, meteorology, geography, ethnography, agriculture
    • Styles of communicating scientific ideas and methods
    • The engagement of 19th- and 20th-century scientists with the ancients (e.g. Erwin Schroedinger's Nature and the Greeks)
  • History of scientific instruments
    • Material culture of science, particularly focused on items held in the Whipple collection (over 7000 objects/possible topics!)
    • The provenance of items purchased by Robert Whipple himself

Research Fellows and Affiliated Scholars

Salim Al-Gailani

History of medicine and the life sciences since 1800, including:

  • Maternity care and experiences of pregnancy and childbirth, including maternal and infant health and welfare in the 19th and 20th centuries
  • History of surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology
  • History and politics of heredity/eugenics
  • History of anatomy, pathology and 'monstrosity'
  • Medical museums and their uses; material culture of medicine/life sciences and scientific collecting
  • Medicine and the public, including public health campaigns, health guides, patient-consumers, health and environmental activism

Debby Banham

Medieval English medicine, science (in as far as it existed) and allied topics, including:

  • Medicine and magic to c.1200 AD
  • Diet and food production to c.1100
  • The Venerable Bede on the calendar, astronomy, tides etc.
  • Finger-counting and monastic sign-language
  • Manuscripts: palaeography, codicology
  • Transmission and reception of texts and ideas in early medieval England
  • Texts in Latin and Old English

Andrew Barry

Sociology of science and technology

Peter Bowler

  • History of evolutionism
  • Science and religion in the late 19th/early 20th century
  • Popular science in the late 19th/early 20th century

Rohan Deb Roy

  • Histories of colonial medicine including categories of medical knowledge, medical geographies, pharmaceutical business, tropical medicine, public health, race, class and gender
  • Historiography of colonial and postcolonial science
  • Historiography of empires since the 1800s
  • Nonhuman (organisms, artefacts and machines) in science studies
  • Constructivism and its critiques
  • Actor Network Theory and after
  • Cultures of eating, feeding and hunger since the 1800s
  • South Asia

Patricia Fara

  • 18th-century physical sciences
  • Science, art and literature in the 18th century
  • Scientific portraits and imagery
  • Isaac Newton and his influence
  • Women in science
  • Erasmus Darwin and the Lunar Society
  • Joseph Banks and botanical imperialism

Isla Fay

Medieval and early-modern English medicine and cosmology, including:

  • Medical practitioners, medicine and civic hygiene (1350–1600)
  • Human osteology, palaeopathology and funerary archaeology (c.1100–c.1550)
  • Poverty and infectious disease
  • Cartography and cosmological diagrams (1500–1600)
  • Medical astrology (1500–1600)
  • Urban history and archaeology

Marina Frasca-Spada

History of philosophy; 18th-century studies:

  • Classical topics in the history of the philosophy of science from Descartes to Kant
  • The history of the interpretations of these classics
  • Text-based work on philosophy classics, in particular on Hume's Treatise of Human Nature
  • Argument and persuasive strategies in the history of philosophy: rhetoric and style; philosophical writing and genres such as the treatise, the dialogue, the essay, the novel; studies of 'human nature' and sensibility; etc.
  • Relations between 18th-century philosophy and literature; the reception and/or dissemination of learned doctrines in the 18th century
  • The history of the book in relation to philosophy and the sciences
  • Related topics in the history of education: learning, teaching and writing for Restoration Cambridge students and dons; publication by or for women in the 18th century
  • Topics in mainstream epistemology and philosophy of science

Jeremy Gray

History of modern mathematics and nearby topics

Vanessa Heggie

19th and 20th-century medicine, biology and life sciences:

  • Degeneration, eugenics and genetics
  • Exploration and experiment: bodily extremes, adventurers, ultra-athletes, polar and high-altitude expeditions post-1850
  • Lifestyles: diet, exercise, drink, smoking, vegetarianism etc.
  • Public health, hygiene, welfare; health visitors and health education
  • Sport: medicine, science, physical education and exercise physiology
  • Women's history: particularly in the medico-scientific professions and as targets of health reform

Stephen John

  • Issues in the philosophy of public health (including Evidence Based Medicine, philosophy of epidemiology, justice and public health policy, distribution of healthcare, libertarian paternalism)
  • Science and values (including science funding, the role of values in research, inductive risk, philosophical issues in science communication, risk analysis)
  • Epistemology and ethics (including testimony, the knowledge norm for action)
  • Environmental ethics (including the precautionary principle, environmental value)
  • Medical ethics (including double effect, non-identity problem, euthanasia)

Peter Jones

  • Medieval medicine, surgery and alchemy
  • Medicine and communication in early modern period
  • Visuality in medieval medicine and science

Sachiko Kusukawa

  • Drawings, observations and printed images, 1450–1700
  • Illustrations in the Philosophical Transactions or licensed publications of the Royal Society

Helen Macdonald

  • Animals
  • Environmental history
  • History of nature conservation in the US and UK
  • History of ecology, ethology, ornithology and cognate field-sciences
  • Field-cultures, particularly of twentieth-century amateur natural history
  • Nature and the military
  • Nature and nationalism
  • Observation and objectivity in the field
  • Sporting/hunting cultures (e.g. wildfowling, big-game hunting) and their relationship to natural sciences/conservation

Scott Mandelbrote

  • Science and religion (especially early modern)
  • Newtonianism
  • Book and manuscript culture, libraries
  • Baconianism
  • Natural theology (especially early modern)
  • 17th-century intellectual history

Tiago Mata

History of the social sciences; sociology of knowledge, economics of science, science communication:

  • History of economics, sociology and anthropology disciplines in the 20th century
  • Knowledge and economic policy in the 20th century
  • History of science popularisation
  • Public understanding of science and public engagement
  • Science in the media: trust and spectacle
  • Scientometrics and the digital humanities
  • Funding regimes of science and technology
  • Social studies of finance

Simon Mitton

  • Astronomy since 1450
  • Observational cosmology
  • Astrophysics
  • Astronomy in the 20th century – instrumentation, telescopes, observatories, radio and space astronomy, planetary science

Hannah Newton

Social history of early modern England (c.1550–1750), and more specifically:

  • Medical knowledge and practice
  • Perceptions of disease, health, and recovery
  • Spiritual, emotional, and physical experiences of sickness
  • Doctor-patient relationships
  • Death, grief, and salvation
  • Emotions and pain
  • Ideas about the human body
  • Childhood, family, and relationships
  • Gender roles of parents
  • Puritans and providence
  • Age and the life-cycle
  • Children's medicine

Katy Price

  • Literature and science in the 19th and 20th centuries
  • Popular science

Ruth Prince

  • Medicine, science, society in colonial and postcolonial Africa: including biomedicine and public health, tropical medicine, medical research past and present, HIV/AIDS, international health and development; 'traditional' medicine; ritual healing
  • Medical pluralism and social science
  • Postcolonial science and technology studies
  • Colonialism, science and medicine / science and empire
  • Topics in medical anthropology / anthropology of medicine

Chitra Ramalingam

  • Natural philosophy and the physical sciences from late 18th to early 20th centuries
  • History of electricity and electrification
  • History of laboratories and experimental practice
  • Quantification, standardization, and metrology
  • Social and cultural history of science in Victorian Britain
  • Science and performance
  • Science in the urban public sphere, esp. 19th-century London
  • Observation, visualization and imaging practices in science; optical illusions and optical toys; science and visual culture
  • History and theory of photography; relations between photography and science; science and cinema

Jennifer Rampling

  • Ancient, medieval and early modern alchemy
  • Chemical medicine (iatrochemistry)
  • Working with medieval and early modern manuscripts and printed books

Leon Rocha

  • History of science, technology and medicine in modern China
  • History of sexuality

Christine Salazar

  • Graeco-Roman and Byzantine medicine
  • History of military medicine up to the 19th century

Anne Secord

  • Popular science, 19th-century
  • Natural history, 18th and 19th-century
  • Visual practices and images
  • History of scientific observation, 18th and 19th-century

Richard Serjeantson

  • Relations between the natural and human sciences in the 16th and 17th centuries
  • Evidence and epistemology in natural philosophy in the same period
  • Science and education in the same period
  • Certain topics in learned medicine, 1530–1650
  • Francis Bacon
  • The early Royal Society
  • Science and early modern utopianism
  • Early modern ideas about language (including philosophical, animal, angelic, etc.)

Deborah Thom

20th-century British history and the human sciences; especially subjects relating to children, feminism, education, gender and science, eugenics, psychology and psychiatry

Martin Underwood

  • Joseph Rotblat and the Manhattan Project
  • Joseph Rotblat and the development of nuclear physics in the UK, post 1945
  • Joseph Rotblat and James Chadwick

Paul White

  • Natural history, 18th–20th century
  • Biological sciences, 19th–20th century
  • Scientific persona and identity construction
  • Relations of science and literature
  • Gender and science
  • Travel and exploration
  • Science and religion
  • Science and the visual arts
  • Darwin/Darwinism/evolutionary theory
  • Emotions in science and medicine

Frances Willmoth

  • 17th-century astronomy
  • Mathematical and astronomical instruments
  • The history of the Isaac Newton Telescope (1967)
  • 16th and 17th-century practical mathematics
  • Fen drainage