A very long time in the making – the monograph from my last project is finally available for pre-order via Oxford University Press.
It contains my research on the effect of religious rhetoric and metaphors in the Covid 19 pandemic, environmental crisis and AI, how they can backfire, even when well-intentioned, how they become instrumentalised in “culture wars” – and how to use them well instead.
Excitingly, this book marks the first longer publication of my work on the history of scientism and the narrative elevation of public scientists and tech leaders to saints and beyond – and its pitfalls (very timely).
Co-authored with the unforgotten Tom McLeish, Amanda Rees, Charlotte Sleigh and David Wilkinson, it also:
– Connects history of science with science communication, providing an essential tool for thinking through current and future scenarios for science engagement
– Identifies problematic overlaps between science and Christianity, previously concealed by the refuted “conflict” thesis
– Refutes the assumption that science shows us “how” and religion “why” we do things, demonstrating the importance of thinking critically about both kinds of human endeavor
The book is released online in December 2025, and in print January 2026. More info can be found on the publishers’ website.
Tag Archives: Science and Religion
New book: Science, Religion, and the Human Future: Conflict, Collusion, and Consequences
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Keynote on AI & History – Autopilot Yes/No Symposium, Amsterdam
I am looking forward to presenting my second Keynote Lecture this year, this time on AI Histories at the Capegemini “Autopilot Yes/No” Conference in Bassum/Amsterdam. I’m looking forward to revisiting the work I did with Simon Schaffer on the Magical Mechanical Museum exhibition, and BBC Radio 4 In Our Time, together also with Elly Truitt. I will be reflecting on how histories of Automata can help us think through current challenges faced on the intersections of AI & Society.
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SSHM funding for ‘Histories of Science, Medicine & Childhood Studies’ symposium
Very grateful to have received a small grant from the Society for the Social History of Medicine for a symposium on Childhood Histories of Medicine that my brilliant colleague Dr Elisabeth M. Yang and I have been cooking up! Watch this space for more (soon!)
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Alice Through the Looking-Glass: A Companion & Book Launch
Beyond thrilled to announce that “Alice Through the Looking-Glass” is published today!🪞In 516 pages, 38 essays by 42 authors, this book offers a truly interdisciplinary exploration of the polymathic influences that shaped Through the Looking-Glass, the lesser explored sequel of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, covering the history of science, logic, philosophy, theology, literature, popular and visual culture, and translation, business, data science, writing, and the visual arts.
And all that for only ÂŁ28 – get it here.
We are thrilled to extend an invitation to celebrate the publication of the book at Christ Church, Oxford’s Upper Library, where Lewis Carroll was once himself sub-librarian, on Friday the 27th of September – tickets are free, but booking is essential. There will be talks by contributors Prof Adam Roberts, Rev Dr Karen Gardiner, Catherine Richards, Dr Nick Coates and myself, a panel discussion, special collections display and wine reception.

I am especially grateful for the generous endorsements of Brian Sibley, BBC veteran and Chair of the Lewis Carroll Society, and Prof Kiera Vaclavik, Professor of Children’s Literature & Culture –
«This volume is colossal in all senses: most obviously – at over 500 pages – in its sheer physical heft, but most importantly in its ambition, scope and achievement. It brings an unparalleled range of approaches to bear on Carroll’s neglected sequel and in doing so marks the arrival of an exciting new wave of Carrollian scholarship and enquiry. A comprehensive and illuminating companion to Looking-Glass and its author, it is also an exemplar of everything that collaborative, transdisciplinary scholarship can offer.»
– Kiera Vaclavik, Professor of Children’s Literature and Childhood Culture, Queen Mary University of London
«This impeccably edited volume with its impressive assemblage of contributors addresses a diverse array of topics: the creation, illustration, translation and commercialization of the world beyond the mirror; discussions philosophical, psychological and theological; studies on logic and linguistics; and, fittingly for a nonsense classic, speculative examinations of the flora and fauna of the Looking-Glass World. This stimulating collection of essays is a timely appreciation of a literary masterwork too long overshadowed by its elder Wonderland sibling.»
– Brian Sibley, Chair of The Lewis Carroll Society
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New essay on George MacDonald as Man of Science
A ground-breaking new collection on Victorian scientists, theologian and fantasist George MacDonald has just been published, containing my essay ‘”A guiding radiance”: George MacDonald’s Science and Fantasy as a New Dialectic.’ MacDonald was famously a chief influence on J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and encouraged Lewis Carroll to publish Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He was a fascinating and radical thinker, and I am thrilled that the book has already been receiving stellar reviews.
“What a book! The ten essays, plus Introduction, in this book are masterful: erudite, insightful, thorough, and even playful. They give us a view of MacDonald we have not previously experienced, showing the unity of his various writerly enterprises: poetry, essays, sermons, realistic fiction, and fantasy… They also demonstrate just how radical MacDonald’s work is, its challenge to easy certainties and conventional thought. The MacDonald these essays explore is an intricate thinker, and a writer acutely aware of the nuances and slipperiness of language… In short, this is the best book of essays we have on MacDonald, exceeding the several that have preceded it. This book is indispensable.” — Roderick McGillis , Emeritus Professor of English, The University of Calgary
“Unsaying the Commonplace has found the golden key for George MacDonald studies. Scholarship on the Scottish author is currently entering a golden age and this collection dazzles with its newfound brilliance.” — Timothy Larsen, Wheaton College”
The essays gathered in this collection rightly reveal George MacDonald as a thoughtful and engaged social critic, alive to the cultural questions of his day. Its tri-disciplinary framework of culture, literature, and theology provides understanding of the intellectual ecologies that nurtured MacDonald, while offering real insight into his works. — John Patrick Pazdziora, The University of Tokyo
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BBC In Our Time: Alice in Wonderland
Great pleasure being back at BBC Broadcasting House with Melvyn Bragg for BBC Radio 4 In Our Time, to explore all things “Alice in Wonderland” with Professors Kiera Vaclavik and Robert Douglas-Fairhurst. The programme will air on Thursday 15 February, 9am & 9:15pm GMT; it’ll be available as a podcast afterwards (with extra content!). If you can’t wait, you can listen to last time I was on IOT, speaking about automata, here.

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Keynote Lecture: European Society for the Study of Science and Theology 2024
I’m very pleased to be one of the confirmed keynote speakers for the 2024 ESSSAT conference on the theme of “Sciences, Theologies, Fictions: The Construction of Narrative in Science and Religion” – the Call for Papers is now open, with a deadline of 31 January 2024.
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Keynote: Lewis Carroll, Logic and Religion
This week I am off to offer a Keynote Lecture at the World Congress on Logic and Religion, which will feature a workshop on Symbolic Logic and Religion. The will be published as a paper in due course, and I am hoping to offer some new connection between Lewis Carroll’s understanding to the practical uses of Logic, to which his understanding of religion, and how it inflected all his work is integral, from his teaching to children’s literature to how he expressed his opposition to vivisection.
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BSHS Roundtable on “Science for the People”
I was honoured to convene and chair this exceptionally stimulating roundtable on “Science for the People” – with James Wilsdon, Jon Topham, Charlotte Sleigh and Stuart Prior – and our shifting ideas of & relationship between “science” and “the people”, and surprising constants in the history and present of science, politics, culture, and in what we actually understand as science. We covered ground from the Society for the Diffusion for Useful Knowledge, to the role of scientific societies, and government science advice, the complexity of what we understand as science in the context of its intersections with “useful”, “applied” and “commercially valuable science”, the deceptive lure of scientistic simplicity, in such slogans as “following the science” or nationalist conceptions of “science superpowers” – but also how science historians can best make an impact in public science discourse, via engaging in such initiatives as Wikipedia, and the access it gives to a breadth of audiences, and huge numbers of them.
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BBC Radio “The Forum” on Moths
I was delighted to be invited back to Broadcasting House to record a programme on Moths for the BBC World Service, alongside Prof Matthew Gandy (University of Cambridge, UK), Alma Sollis (Smithsonian, Washington DC), and artist Liina Lember.
For those of you who read German, I gave a preview of some of the issues we cover in during my curatorship of Real Scientists DE – from Islamic Poetry, to silk making, to citizen science, and how entomology can be racist. Everyone else will have to wait till November 10th, when the programme will be broadcast worldwide.
And here’s the German preview in my thread for “Real Scientists DE”:
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