Professor Simon Naylor
- Professor of Historical Geography (School of Geographical & Earth Sciences)
telephone:
0141 3305171
email:
Simon.Naylor@glasgow.ac.uk
School of Geographical, and Earth Sciences, East Quadrangle, Main Building
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7747-1714Biography
I am an internationally recognised historical geographer and historian of science, technology and exploration, with a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I have a strong track record in leading debates in my field, achieved through editorship of books and journal special issues, author of monographs and of journal articles in the top-geography, sociology and history of science journals. I have also served as Editor of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, which is one of the foremost journals of Geography internationally. My global esteem is recognised through numerous invitations as keynote speaker at international meetings and organisations including the Smithsonian. He was the most recent holder of the National Library of Scotland’s Graham Brown Research Fellowship.
I have a number of ongoing, externally funded research projects: 1) the historical geographies of meteorological observatories in nineteenth-century Britain and its empire; 2) the social histories of extreme weather in Scotland since the late nineteenth century; 3) scientific instruments and museum spaces. Previous research projects have examined the historical geographies of geophysics in the polar regions during the Cold War; the histories and heritage of environmental and climate change; and regional scientific cultures in the nineteenth century.
Publications
Selected publications
Naylor, S. (2010) Regionalizing Science: Placing Knowledges in Victorian England. Series: Science and culture in the nineteenth century (11). Pickering & Chatto: London. ISBN 9781851966363
Naylor, S. (2009) Fieldwork and the geographical career: T. Griffith Taylor and the exploration of Australia. In: Naylor, S. and Ryan, J. (eds.) New Spaces of Exploration: Geographies of Discovery in the Twentieth Century. Series: Tauris historical geography series (2). I.B. Tauris: London, pp. 105-124. ISBN 9781848850170
Turchetti, S., Dean, K., Naylor, S. and Siegert, M. (2008) Accidents and opportunities: a history of the radio echo-sounding of Antarctica, 1958–79. British Journal for the History of Science, 41(03), pp. 417-444. (doi: 10.1017/S0007087408000903)
Dean, K., Naylor, S. , Turchetti, S. and Siegert, M. (2008) Data in Antarctic science and politics. Social Studies of Science, 38(4), pp. 571-604. (doi: 10.1177/0306312708090693)
All publications
Grants
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2020-2022 Building Climate Resilience through Community, Landscapes and Cultural Heritage. AHRC; £320,000K, Naylor Co-I. Part of the UKRI Climate Resilience Programme.
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2020-1 Canadian SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, ‘Reassembling Ontario’s “Near North”: Reparation through university-museum-Indigenous research partnerships’; grant period 2 years; International Collaborator; $200000 (PI Kirsten Greer, Nipissing University).
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2019-20 Graham Brown Research Fellowship, National Library of Scotland; £5000.
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2019 SGSSS / ESRC Interdisciplinary competition studentship grant, ‘Exploring the social, historical and environmental legacies of steel slag’, grant period 4 years; £14413 per year.
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2018 AHRC CDP studentship grant, with Historic Scotland, ‘From Water to Steam: The transition from renewable energy to coal during Scotland’s industrial revolution’; grant period 3 years; £14413 per year.
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2013 AHRC Standard Grant, Care for the Future Theme, ‘Spaces of experience and horizons of expectation: the implications of extreme weather events, past, present and future’; grant period 3 years; £1,052,745; Co-applicant (PI Professor Georgina Endfield, Nottingham University).
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2013 AHRC Follow On Funding Grant, ‘Snow Scenes: Exploring the Role of Place in Weather Memories’, grant period 14 months until 30 April 2014; £60213; Co-Investigator (PI Professor Georgina Endfield, Nottingham University).
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2012 British Academy / Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grant, ‘The Meteorological Crusade: Britain’s Colonial Weather Observatories’; grant period 2 years until August 2014 (extended to April 2015); £6120; Principal Investigator.
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2012 AHRC Follow On Funding Grant, ‘Weather talks, Weather Walks: Exploring Popular Climate Histories and Futures’; grant period 1 year until end of January 2013; £90000; Co-applicant (PI Professor Georgina Endfield, Nottingham University).
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2010 AHRC Network Grant, ‘Anticipatory Histories of Landscape and Wildlife’; grant period 1 year; £30000; Principal Investigator (Co-applicant Dr Caitlin DeSilvey, University of Exeter).
Supervision
Current PhD Students, all externally funded by UKRI, government bodies or charities like Leverhume.
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Iara Calton, From Water to Steam: The transition from renewable energy to coal during Scotland’s industrial revolution. University of Glasgow; 2018-2022; Funded by AHRC CDP studentship grant, with Historic Environment Scotland, second supervisor Paul Bishop.
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George Tobin, A Historical Geography of Relief Models. University of Glasgow; 2017-2020; Funded by AHRC CDP studentship, with Royal Geographical Society.
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Tom Sefton, Lord Kelvin and the Earth Sciences. University of Glasgow; 2016-2019; Funded by Leverhulme Trust Collections grant; second supervisor Nicky Reeves.
- Kirk, Jenna
Exploring the legacies of steel slag at Glengarnock, North Ayrshire: a situated interdisciplinary account of an anthropogenic geomaterial - Yang, Xin
A tool for scientific governance? The historical geography of China’s Arctic research station
Professional activities & recognition
Research fellowships
- 2019 - 2020: Graham Brown Research Fellowship, National Library of Scotland
Grant committees & research advisory boards
- 2014 - 2021: ARHC, Peer Review College
Editorial boards
- 2014 - 2020: Editor, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
- 2014 - Present: Editor, Routledge Research in Historical Geography series.
- 2010 - Present: Editorial Board Member, Journal of Historical Geography.
Professional & learned societies
- 2012 - 2014: Trustee and Council Member, British Society for the History of Science
Selected international presentations
- 2015: Managing Cultural Heritage in a Climate Change(d) Future (Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute)
- 2017: Unsettling Settler Colonialism: Canada at 150 (University of Nipissing, Ontario, Canada)
Supplementary
- Formal academic advisor to a major BBC2 series, Icons of the Twentieth Century, particularly relating to explorers.
Additional information
ESTEEM INDICATORS
- 2019 Invited International Speaker, Fourth Conference in the History of Meteorological Science and Technology, China Meteorological Administration Training Centre, Beijing, China.
- 2018-19 Formal academic advisor to a major BBC2 series, Icons of the Twentieth Century.
- 2018 Inaugural lecture, ‘The history of science in Cornwall’, at the Royal Institution of Cornwall’s 200th anniversary celebrations, Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro.
- 2017 Invited talk and workshop participation, ‘Unsettling Settler Colonialism: Canada at 150’, University of Nipissing, Ontario, Canada.
- 2015 Invited talk and workshop participation, ‘Managing Cultural Heritage in a Climate Change(d) Future’, Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute in collaboration with and funded by the AHRC, Washington DC.
- 2014 Invited talk, ‘Regional geographies of scientific knowledge: A case-study from nineteenth-century England’, López Piñero Institute for the history of medicine and science, University of Valencia.
- 2011 Invited talk and workshop participation, ‘Historical Geographies of Weather and Climate’, South Asian Historical Records and Climate Workshop, AHRC and British Library funded event, Bangalore, India.
RELEVANT UNIVERSITY AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
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2019- Deputy Head, School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow
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2019- Head of Human Geography Research Group, University of Glasgow
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2016-20 Editor, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
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2014- Editor, Routledge Research in Historical Geography Series
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2010- Editorial Board Member, Journal of Historical Geography.
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2006-10 Book Review Editor, Journal of Historical Geography
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2014-21 Member of AHRC Peer Review College
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2012-14 Council Member and Trustee of the British Society for the History of Science.
