Network Member Profiles
Diarmid Finnegan, Queen's University, Belfast
Biography
I am a historical geographer currently based in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast. Before taking up my post at Queen’s in 2005 I was a postdoctoral research associate in the Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh. In broad terms my research is concerned with the historical geographies of scientific knowledge. In previous work I have examined the reception of glacial theory in one civic context, early-Victorian Edinburgh, investigated the historical geographies of civic science associated with Scottish natural history societies in the period 1831-1900 and, with Charles Withers and Rebekah Higgitt, explored the role of geography in the work of the British Association for the Advancement of Science before 1933. My book on natural history societies in Victorian Scotland has recently been published by Pickering & Chatto. A project on the rhetorical geographies of science and religion in the mid-Victorian period is now well established. I have also begun work on the personal, institutional and intellectual connections between geography and Christian missions in the late-Victorian period.
Contact
d.finnegan@qub.ac.uk
University Homepage
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Research Interests
Spaces of scientific knowledge - history of geography and the environmental sciences - nineteenth century - science and religion.
Themes
Earth.
Selected Publications
Finnegan, D. A. (forthcoming) Geographies of scientific speech in mid-Victorian Edinburgh, In: Livingstone, D. N. and Withers, C. W. J. (eds.), Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Finnegan, D. A. (2009) Natural History Societies and Civic Culture in Victorian Scotland. London: Pickering and Chatto.
Finnegan, D. A. (2008) 'An aid to mental health': Natural history, alienists and therapeutics in Victorian Scotland, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 39 (3), 326-337.
Withers, C. W. J., Higgitt, R. and Finnegan D. A. (2008) Historical geographies of provincial science: Themes in the setting and reception of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Britain, 1831-c.1939, British Journal for the History of Science, 41 (3), 385-415.
Finnegan, D. A. (2008) The spatial turn: Geographical approaches in the history of science, Journal of the History of Biology, 41 (2), 369-388.
Finnegan, D. A. (2007) Naturalising the Highlands: Geographies of mountain fieldwork in late-Victorian Scotland, Journal of Historical Geography, 37, 791-815.
Withers, C. W. J., Finnegan D. A. and Higgitt, R. (2006) Geography's other histories? Geography and science in the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1831-c.1933, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31, 433-451.
Finnegan D. A. (2005) Natural history societies in late-Victorian Scotland and the pursuit of local civic science, British Journal for the History of Science, 38 (1), 53-72.
Finnegan, D. A. (2004) The work of ice: Glacial theory and scientific culture in early-Victorian Edinburgh, British Journal for the History of Science, 37 (1), 29-52.
Withers, C. W. J. and Finnegan D. A. (2003) Natural history societies, fieldwork and local knowledge in nineteenth century Scotland: Towards a historical geography of civic science, Cultural Geographies, 10, 334-53.