The Centre for the History of Science welcomes research proposals from university and institutional partners and supports academic history of science through grant-making and conference organisation. These activities aim to give historical context to the Society’s present concerns, breathing life into some of its lesser explored resources, and to promote science to a wider audience through its extraordinary historic collections.
Research opportunities
Collaborative doctoral partnerships
The Centre for the History of Science hosts AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Awards studentships. We are part of the Science Museums and Archives Consortium with BT Archives, Science Museum Group (National Science and Media Museum, Science and Industry Museum, the National Railway Museum and Locomotion), The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. We welcome applications through various regional consortia such as the South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership or the London Arts & Humanities Partnership.
The Lisa Jardine grant scheme
The Lisa Jardine Grant Scheme provides travel grants to early career scholars whose research combines arts or humanities with the natural sciences. The scheme will fund researchers’ travel to facilitate use of history of science collections, including the Royal Society’s own, in support of their research in the field of intellectual history. It will also provide travel grants for attendance of conferences, networking or training events centred on the history of science and related interdisciplinary subjects. The scheme is open for applications twice annually.
Full scheme details.
Research collaborations
The Royal Society supports academic researchers in the history of science and related disciplines and is host to several active research projects, often generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and led by associated scholars.
Workshop and conferences
We host and co-organise academic workshops and conferences related to the collections.
Student placements
We welcome students undertaking a degree or qualification which includes compulsory placements related to the collections. Placement work has varied from arranging and cataloguing new accessions as part of an Archives and Records Management MA course to hands-on experience at curating digital assets for Digital Humanities MA.
Examples of past projects