Dr Ben Marsden

Biography

BA (MA) Hons in Mathematics, University of Cambridge (1987); Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics (MMath) (Mathematical Tripos Part III), University of Cambridge (1988); PhD in History, Philosophy and Social Relations of Science, University of Kent at Canterbury (1992); British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Leeds (1993-1995); Royal Society - British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow in History of Science, University of Kent at Canterbury (1995-1999) and University of Aberdeen (1999-2000); Lecturer in Cultural History, University of Aberdeen (2000-2009); Senior Fellow, Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, MIT/Harvard (2005-2006); Senior Lecturer in History of Science and Technology (2009-present); Deputy Head of School of Divinity, History and Philosophy (2009-2011); Director, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (2009-2010); Director, Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine (2010-2011, 2012-present); Head of Department of History (2018-2023)

Research Overview

Science and technology in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century culture, especially the cultural history of engineering and technology in Britain; the historical relationship between science and music; engineers as authors and readers; cultural history of food.

Selected publications have addressed: the history of engineering education (esp. of W. J. Macquorn Rankine), in the British Journal for the History of Science (1992) and in Crosbie Smith and Jon Agar (eds.), Making space for science (Macmillan, 1998); technological success and failure in History of Science (1998); the history of energy and the relationship between science and music in Hessenbruch (ed.), Readers' guide to the history of science (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000); and the reading practices of I. K. Brunel in Marsden, O'Connor and Hutchison (eds.), Uncommon contexts (Pickering & Chatto, 2013). His account of James Watt and the separate condenser appeared as Watt's perfect engine: steam and the age of invention (Icon, 2002; Columbia, 2004). He has also contributed extensively to the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). With Crosbie Smith he has written Engineering empires: a cultural history of technology in nineteenth-century Britain (Macmillan, 2005 (hbk), 2006 (pbk)). The first part of an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between the mechanical analysis, architectural history and comparative anatomy of Cambridge professor Robert Willis was published in the British Journal for the History of Science (2004) and a discussion of Willis's models and apparatus appears in the proceedings (eds Alexandrina Buchanan et al.) of a conference on Willis held at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in September 2016. He revisited the history of heat engines, especially those using air as a working substance, in Transactions of the Newcomen Society (2006). He contributed a new entry on meteorologist John Aitken to the new edition of the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (2007); and his study of attitudes towards the engineering science of naval architecture at the British Association for the Advancement of Science appeared in a thematic volume of the Journal for European Administrative History (2008). A further paper on John Aitken's 'outdoor physics' has appeared in a Norwegian journal of cultural history (2009); and a study of perceptions of French technological culture amongst British artisans in the early ninteenth century has appeared in a volume edited by Liliane Hilaire-Perez (2010). He is completing the first major biography of Macquorn Rankine for Ashgate: a preliminary study, 'Ranking Rankine', appeared in History of Science (2013). With Peter McCaffery he edited the Reader in Cultural History (Routledge, 2014). With Ralph O'Connor and Hazel Hutchison he edited Uncommon Contexts, a collection of studies in literature and science in the nineteenth century, including his own study of I. K. Brunel as reader and author. He has also published, in Hochadel and Nieto-Galan (eds) Urban Histories of Science: Making Knowledge in the City (Routledge) a study of nineteenth-century Glasgow as the 'metropolis of mechanics'.  He edited Notes and Records: the Royal Society's Journal for the History of Science (2015-2018).

Current Research

He is currently: completing the first book-length study of W. J. M. Rankine and the origins of academic engineering in nineteenth-century Britain (for Ashgate). 

Collaborations

He has worked closely with Crosbie Smith on the AHRC-funded project on the cultural history of the ocean-going steamer in nineteenth-century Britain; he maintains close links with staff at the National Museum of Scotland (Science and Technology Division).

Funding and Grants

He received a major grant from the Dibner Institute of the History of Science and Technology, MIT/Harvard (2005-2006) as Senior Fellow there.

Teaching Responsibilities

Includes: 

Contributions to the University's interdisciplinary Sixth Century Courses, including 'Fearsome Engines' 

Europe in the 20th Century (level 1)

Scientific Revolution (level 1)

Renaissance and Reformations (level 1)

Birth of Modernity (level 2)

History of Medicine for Medical Students (level 3)

Eating History (level 3)

Thinking History (level 3)

Cultures of Victorian Science and Technology (level 4)

Undergraduate Dissertation (level 4)

Engaging with Historiography (level 5)

MLitt in Museum Studies and MLitt in Literature, Science and Medicine