University of Warwick academic receives funding from The British Academy/Wolfson Fellowships Awards

The British Academy/Wolfson Fellowships Awards will be providing funding to Dr James Poskett, Associate Professor in the History of Science and Technology at the University of Warwick.

The funding, worth up to £130,000 across three years, will be used to support early career researchers in arts and humanities who have shown outstanding talent and public engagement. With the support of The British Academy and The Wolfson Fellowship, Dr Poskett will be able to communicate his research to a global audience.

Through his research, Dr Poskett will be working on a project titled ‘The Scientific Revolution as Global History, 1200-1800’. He hopes this will provide a major reassessment of the concept of the ‘scientific revolution’. In doing so, the project will build on Dr Poskett’s recent book ‘Horizons: A Global History of Science’.

Discussing the award, Dr James Poskett said: “I’m thrilled to have been awarded this grant from The British Academy and the Wolfson Fellowship. I’m going to be taking the opportunity to examine the connection between old and new knowledge in five early modern empires: the Ming, the Mughals, the Ottomans, the Mexica, and the Holy Roman Empire.

“Drawing on recent work in the anthropology of history and global historiography, I will look to show how remarkably similar processes have shaped the development of science in each society.”

Through his research, Dr Poskett will study how different cultures, from Mughal India to Ming China, began to integrate old traditions with new experiences. The project will aim to provide a new basis for presenting science and its global past to public audiences around the world.