For nearly half a century, heritage organisations have created digital inventories of their collections. Inspired by the prospect of combining these records so they may be explored together, the Congruence Engine research project set out to build digital bridges and pathways between collections dedicated to the UK’s industrial history for textiles, energy and communications. Launched in 2021, Congruence Engine navigated the generative AI revolution that commenced a year later. As a result, Emergent Histories is by turns a reflection on the historical and curatorial possibilities arising from collections, a digital history how-to manual, and a narrative of the tribulations of AI early adopters. It will be of interest to historians, curators, students – and to anyone who cares for the industrial aspects of our past.

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Learning to Cut fills this significant gap. A range of case studies from the French, Italian, German, and English contexts reveal diverse modes of surgical teaching and learning in early modern towns and cities, and how they were shaped by existing social, economic, and occupational structures. Equally varied were the spaces and institutions where prospective practitioners learned and experienced surgery. Thus, the shop, the patient’s house, the hospital, the guild hall, and the anatomy theatre were all sites for learning, teaching – and cutting. The chapters present rich narratives of education and, together, shed new light on the practice of early modern surgery.

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It discusses how organic advocates on both sides of the Atlantic deployed the Hunzas, a community in British India (later Pakistan), as an example of a ‘tribe’ whose vigour could be ascribed to their farming techniques and diets. The narrative concludes by demonstrating how US travel writers in the 1950s and 1960s represented Hunza as a Shangri-La – a paradise whose inhabitants lived prolonged lives in blissful contentment.

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Using a wealth of primary-source research in the Royal Observatory’s archives and elsewhere, Lee T. Macdonald describes and analyses how the Observatory, originally founded in 1675 to tackle the problem of finding longitude at sea, branched out into areas at the cutting edge of astronomical research, including photographic mapping of the sky and the study of solar eclipses. He shows how the Observatory remained committed to the traditional missions in navigational and positional astronomy, and how its work became increasingly challenged by the growth of London, culminating in relocation. The story is a valuable exemplar of how a working observatory gradually transformed into a heritage institution, which thrives to this day.

The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1881–1939 will be essential reading for astronomers and historians of science, and important for heritage professionals, particularly those working in historic scientific institutions.

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Petty Tyranny and Soulless Discipline? places patients at its centre to explore their daily lives, including their admission, care, treatment, discharge and after-care, or death. These narratives, drawn from a range of primary sources, are contextualised in an historical analysis of how and why a mixture of stagnating and changing knowledge, attitudes and ideals affected patients’ experiences. The Lunacy Act 1890 underpinned life in the mental hospitals by setting out their organisation, regulation and funding. A variety of professionals, campaigners for reform, central government departments, local authorities, trades unions and voluntary organisations, often with competing agendas, influenced what happened to patients. There was also new medical knowledge, from Britain and beyond. This book weaves these strands into a coherent whole, to reveal the complexity of mental health provision in the past and enable reflection that might inform debate today.

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Palaeontology in Public considers the connections between palaeontology and public culture across the past two centuries. In so doing, it explores how these public dimensions have been crucial to the development of palaeontology, and indeed how they conditioned wider views of science, nature, the environment, time and the world. The book provides a history of vertebrate palaeontology through a series of compelling case studies. Dinosaurs feature, of course, including Spinosaurus, Winsor McCay’s ‘Gertie the Dinosaur’ and the creatures of Jurassic Park and The Lost World. But there are also the small mammals of the Mesozoic, South American Glyptodons, and human ancestors like Neanderthals and Australopithecines. This book shows how palaeontology is defined by its relationship with public audiences and how this connection is central to our vision of the past and future of the Earth and its inhabitants.

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Individual chapters demonstrate the extent to which Neapolitan scholars and academies contributed to debates within the Republic of Letters that continued until deep into the nineteenth century. They also show how studies of Neapolitan natural disasters yielded unique insights that contributed to the development of fields such as medicine and earth sciences. Taken together, these studies resituate the city of Naples as an integral part of an increasingly globalised scientific culture, and present a rich and engaging portrait of the individuals who lived, worked and made scientific knowledge there.

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While women are too often excluded from traditional narratives of the history of science, this book centres on the voices and experiences of women across a range of domains of knowledge. By questioning our understanding of what science is, where it happens, and who produces scientific knowledge, this book is an aid to liberating the curriculum within schools and universities.

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Unrivalled insights from the Royal Society’s comprehensive archives have enabled the authors to investigate more than 350 years of scientific journal publishing. The editorial management, business practices and financial difficulties of the Philosophical Transactions and its sibling Proceedings reveal the meaning and purpose of journals in a changing scientific community. At a time when we are surrounded by calls to reform the academic publishing system, it has never been more urgent that we understand its history.

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In 1863 five students from the Chōshū clan, with a desperate desire to learn from the West, made their way to England. They were put in the care of Williamson and his wife. Their mission was to learn about cutting-edge Western technology, science, economics and politics. When they returned home they rapidly became leading figures in Japanese life at a particularly turbulent time, one of them serving as the country’s first prime minister. Subsequently many other Japanese students followed in their footsteps and studied at UCL.

The remarkable story of the part Williamson and UCL played in the modernisation of Japan is little known today. This biography will promote a deeper understanding of Williamson’s scientific innovations and his legacy for Anglo-Japanese relations. An Afterword briefly outlines the extraordinary careers of the pioneering students after they left Britain.

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