Location: Seminar Room 1.01, 11-14 Blenheim Terrace, LS2 9HD, Leeds Links: campus map What3Words: ///thinks.back.hands All seminars start at 3.30pm, with tea & coffee available from 3pm. All are welcome (especially postgraduate students!)  For virtual participation, a TEAMS link will be made available here on the day of each seminar (or contact the seminar organiser as below). Wednesday 30th September:

Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal and Lecture | Royal Society Professor Gregory Radick at the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Centre for History & Philosophy of Science) at the University of Leeds has been awarded the prestigious 2026 Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal and Lecture by the Royal Society. The Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal and Lecture is given for excellence in the history of science, philosophy of science or the social function of science.

Metascience -

Leeds postdoc and Wellcome Trust Fellow Elisabeth Yang has, along with Andrea Graus and Violeta Ruiz, edited a Special Issue of the journal Osiris on Histories of Science and Childhoods. Building on the premise that neither childhood nor science is universal, natural, or an essential entity, this Osiris volume examines the interrelation of these two categories from the Middle Ages to the present.

Welcome to the British Society for the Philosophy of Science's annual conference! This site is your one-stop shop for (we hope) everything you need to know. If you can't find the information you're l...

Schedule: 11.00 – 11.10                    Welcome – Alastair Wilson (Leeds) 11.10 – 12.10                    “Ways of Closing the Circle” – Margherita Moro (Leeds) and Alastair Wilson (Leeds) 12.10 – 13.30 Lunch 13.30 – 14.30                    Comments on Adlam – Lina Jansson (Nottingham) 14.30 – 15.30                    “Epistemic Solutions for Epistemic Problems?” – Lucy Mason (Pittsburgh) 15.30 – 16.00 Break 16.00 – 17.00                    “Future directions in Epistemology of QM” – Emily Adlam (Chapman University)

11 July 2026, Leeds The Centre for History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds will be hosting a workshop on “Alternative Historical Paths for the Biological Sciences” on 11 July 2026. Funding for travel grants of up to 500 USD for graduate students and early-career researchers has been generously provided by the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB), which is sponsoring the event as one of its Off-Year Workshops.

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

Join us at Leeds Central Library with science historian Professor Topham for a talk based on his prize-winning study, Reading the Book of Nature (2022), where he will explore why the book was publishe...

IMPORTANT: Early-bird registration closes on 1 MAY. You will NOT be able to book campus accommodation if you don’t register by this date, and will have to make your own arrangements. (Early-bird registration is also cheaper.) VENUE: University of Leeds KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Robin Hendry (Durham), Tarja Knuuttila (Vienna), Eleanor Knox (KCL) DATES: Tuesday 21 July — Thursday 23 July TO REGISTER/FURTHER INFORMATION: Go to…

Leverhulme Research fellow Dr Fran Kohlt is celebrating the release of new co-authored work, 'Science, Religion and the Human Future'. Published by Oxford University Press, this book connects history of science with science communication, providing an essential tool for thinking through current and future scenarios for science engagement.

University of Leeds Centre for History & Philosophy of Science in collaboration with the Archives & Library of the Institution of Engineering and Technology ‘The Electrical Age (for Women)’ magazine 1926-86: an online digital history seminar. Date: Thursday 16th April 2026. Time: 14:00 - 16:00 GMT An online TEAMS event (link below). Online digitised magazines are great for research, education and public engagement.

The School is pleased to announce that it has several funding opportunities available for taught Masters students for 2026-27 entry, in addition to the many offered by the University more generally.

The School is pleased to announce that it has several funding opportunities available for taught Masters students for 2026-27 entry, in addition to the many offered by the University more generally.

On 18 March 2026, Adelene Buckland (Kings College London) will give a talk in the Centre for HPS at Leeds titled, “Artificial Mothers: Technoscientific Utopias in the 1830s and beyond.” The talk wi…

On 04 March 2026, Kristin Hussey (Newcastle University) will give a talk in the Centre for HPS at Leeds titled, "Contesting ‘Shift Work’ Disorder: Sleep, labour and medical perspectives on shift work in 20th century Britain." The talk will run from 3:30 to 5:00 PM in the IDEA Boardroom (17 Blenheim Terrace) and on Teams. Tea and coffee will be available in the room from 3:00, with dinner and drinks to follow up the talk. Find the Teams room here.

Monica Stenzel, a PhD student in Leeds HPS, will be giving a talk, titled "Fuzzy Logic: Wool as the Once and Future Fibre" to the Linnean Society of London on 25-February from 18:00 - 20:00. Find out more and purchase your tickets here.

On Thursday 05 March, Professor Gregory Radick will be giving a talk titled "Nurturing Science: An Enhanced Role for the Humanities" at the Simpson Center for Humanities in Seattle, Washington. Find the event details here!

Ellen Clarke, the Centre for HPS's director this year, was interviewed last week for the New Books in Philosophy podcast, on her recently published book The Units of Life! Check out the podcast here!

Dr. Edwin Rose, a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in HPS at Leeds has been featured in a new article in the Smithsonian Magazine, "Newly Digitized Records Reveal How Indigenous People Shared Their Knowledge of New Zealand’s Plants With Captain Cook’s Crew." Take a look at the article here.

All seminars will take place in 17 Blenheim Terrace SR 2 (G.04) – the ground floor IDEA seminar room. (Find a campus map here). Online access will be via MS Teams; get in touch with e.clarke@leeds.ac.uk for a link. All talks run from 3.30-5pm, but we will meet in the room for tea/coffee from 3pm. All are welcome and postgraduate students are strongly encouraged to attend.

All WIPs run from 12-1 on Tuesdays, in the Botany House seminar room 1.03. WiP 2026 Semester 2 27th January– Tadhg Goodison, A tale of Two Almanacs- Meteorology in the world of London print culture Chair: Edwin 3rd February– Yuyou Wu, Reclaiming Realism for Models of the Free Energy Principle: A Perspectivist Account Chair: Harry 10 February – …

Harry Parker British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow Harry Parker is principally a historian of modern Britain, with interests ranging across the cultural, intellectual, and environmental history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He completed his PhD at Cambridge, where he worked on the history of the social sciences, before moving to the Science Museum to work as a postdoc on a…

Call for Registration: At the Intersection of Pragmatism, Scientific Realism and Cognitive Science Date: January 20-21, 2026 Location: Seminar Room 2, IDEA Centre (17 Blenheim Terrace), University of Leeds We are pleased to announce a two-day workshop exploring themes at the intersection of pragmatism, realism, and perceptual and cognitive science. Overview: This workshop explores themes at the intersection of pragmatism, realism, and perceptual and cognitive science, inspired by Hasok Chang’s…

Our postdoc Elisabeth Yang and her fellow co-editors, Andrea Graus and Violeta Ruiz, are thrilled to see the final publication of our special issue of Osiris: The Histories of Science and Childhoods. Featured are articles written by an array of brilliant scholars! Stay tuned!

The annual meeting of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science is coming to Leeds! 21-23rd July There is a call for symposia here And call for abstracts here: Call for Abstracts The Call for is now open for papers at the British Society for Philosophy of Science 2026 Annual Conference in Leeds on 21st-23rd July 2026. Papers may be on a wide selection of topics within the philosophy of science (see list below) and should be suitable for presentation in 20 minutes, which will allow 10 minutes discussion.

Announcing HPS/Centre CHoP Talk, 19 November: Edwin Rose: A Surplus in the Sciences? Printing, Publishing and Distributing Cambridge’s first Scientific Journal, 1821-1928 Next Wednesday, 19 November 2025, 4-5pm, in the School of English (Ground Floor of House 10, access through House 6), there will be a joint seminar of the Centre for HPS and the Centre for the Comparative History of Print (Centre-CHoP), exploring the history of scientific printing. 

Announcing the 9th Notes and Records Essay Award Notes and Records reports on current research and archival activities across the history of science, technology and medicine. Our Essay Award is open to researchers from the above fields who have completed a postgraduate degree within the last five years. Enter for your chance to win £500 and publication in the journal for the winning entry. Submission deadline: 28 February 2026 - visit Notes and Records Essay Award | Royal Society

Rose, Edwin D.. Reading the World: British Practice of Natural History, 1760-1820. : University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025. xii + 395 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 9780822948513.$45.00 (paper), ISBN 9780822967705. Reviewed by Nathan Cornish (University of Southampton, Exeter University, Kew Gardens) Published on H-Sci-Med-Tech (October, 2025) Commissioned by Penelope K. Hardy (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse)

All seminars will take place in 17 Blenheim Terrace SR 2 (G.04) – the ground floor IDEA seminar room. (Find a campus map here). Online access will be via MS Teams; a link will be shared in at…

Abstract. This book addresses a concept—that of the organism, or biological individual—which is used across biology to pick out living things, but which is

This year's prestigious Haldane lecture (click) will be delivered by Greg Radick. The JBS Haldane Lecture recognises an individual for outstanding ability to communicate topical subjects in genetics research, widely interpreted, to an interested lay audience.  This speaker will have a flair for conveying the relevance and excitement of recent advances in genetics in an informative and engaging way.  The annual open lecture will be delivered on a topic, and in a place, agreed with the Genetics Society.  In addition to delivering the Lecture, the recipient will receive an honorarium of £1000 and a three-year membership of the Society.