British Association for the Advancement of Science archive launch

About

Join us as Robert Fox, emeritus professor of the history of science, University of Oxford, discusses "the two cultures", the role and place of science and humanities in contemporary society while drawing on examples from the BAAS archive. Together with Amanda Faulkner, Ph.D candidate in history, Columbia University, who will focus on the use of digitised historic databases, such as BAAS, to generate new insights into the history of science.

Jisc has partnered with Wiley to bring together a major digital archive on the history of science drawing from collections across UK university libraries and archives. Now nearing 1 million pages, the BAAS collection documents the efforts of the British scientific community to establish science as a professional activity and turn Britain into a globally competitive centre for science.

Many of the prominent names of British science since the early 19th century are associated with the BAAS. These include past Presidents such as William Ramsay; Norman Lockyer; John Scott Burden Sanderson; Albert, Prince Consort; Charles Lyell; William Fairbairn; Thomas Henry Huxley; and Oliver Lodge.

Over 90% of the content is digitally available for the first time. Join us Thursday 19 May 2022, at 16:00 BST, to find out how this collection can advance your research.

Speakers

The panel will be chaired by Geoff Browell, head of archives and research collections, King's College London, one of the participating archives in the BAAS collection.

• Robert Fox, emeritus professor of the history of science, University of Oxford

His main research interests are in European science and technology since the 18th century. He is currently working on the relations between science and international politics in the 1920s and 1930s.

• Amanda Faulkner, Ph.D. candidate in history, Columbia University

Her dissertation examines perceptions of belonging and exclusion in the seventeenth-century Dutch world. After graduating with highest honors from the University of Texas at Austin, she moved to New York to pursue a Ph.D. at Columbia. She is currently researching in the Netherlands as a Fulbright grantee and a Mellon international dissertation research fellow. The BAAS collections is available to universities and colleges in the UK for free through Jisc and internationally through Wiley .

Who should attend?

• Researchers, teachers and students with an interest on the history of science (including Agriculture, Astronomy, Biology, Botany, Chemistry, Economics, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics and Technology)
• Academics with an interest in research-lead teaching and using primary sources
• Academic liaison and subject specialist librarians
• Library acquisition and e-resource managers
• Roles with responsibility for collection development and content strategy
• Archive managers
• Digitisation specialists

Contact

For further information, please contact events@jisc.ac.uk