Dr Michael Bycroft

Office: Room 3.75, third floor, Faculty of Arts Building

Email and phone: M.Bycroft@warwick.ac.uk, 024 761 50442 (internal: 50442)

Roles in History department: Chair of Academic Conduct Panel (2025-26)

Office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12-1pm, weekly during term time except during reading weeks. To attend, knock on the door of my office (details above) during one of these hours. Alternatively, email in advance to arrange a Teams chat during these hours.

Update: in week 8 of term 2, my Thursday office hour is from 1 to 2pm, not 12 to 1pm.

I am a historian of early modern Europe with a particular interest in France, the Enlightenment, and the physical sciences. My current book project is a retelling of early modern science through the lens of precious stones, a major and underrated class of objects in the history of science.

Gems aside, I have published on the life and work of the French scientist Charles Dufay (1698-1739), the subject of my PhD thesis; the role of institutions in shaping scientific inquiry, especially in early modern France and England; the rococo movement in the decorative arts, and its connections to the science of the time; science in the 贰苍肠测肠濒辞辫茅诲颈别 of Diderot and d'Alembert; the history of connoisseurship in art and science; and the fate of wondrous phenomena in the Enlightenment.

I am now working on three projects: a defence of empiricism in the humanities; a survey of material evaluation in Europe in the long eighteenth century; and a study of the place of pounamu (also known as 'greenstone' and 'New Zealand jade') in the history of knowledge.

Career path

Jan 2023-present: Associate Professor in the History of Science and Technology, University of 糖心TV

Sep 2017-: Assistant Professor in the History of Science and Technology, University of 糖心TV
2014-2017: Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, University of 糖心TV
2013-2014: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dupr茅 Group, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
2010-13: PhD, History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
2007-8: MA, History and Philosophy of Science, University of Toronto, Canada
2003-5: BA, History and Philosophy of Science, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
2006: BSc, Physics and Mathematics, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Selected publications

"A neo-positivist theory of scientific change," BJHS Themes, Volume 9: The History of Science and the 鈥楤ig Picture鈥� (2024): 129 - 148
"Science Beyond the Enlightenment," introduction to The Eighteenth-Century Problem, 40 Years On, special issue of Journal of Early Modern Studies 12, no. 1 (2023), co-edited with Adrian Johns
(co-edited with Alexander Wragge-Morley), "Science and Connoisseurship in the European Enlightenment," special issue of History of Science 60, no. 4 (2022): 439-457
(co-edited with Sven Dupr茅), Gems in the Early Modern World: Materials, Knowledge and Global Trade, 1450-1800 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019)
鈥淩egulation and Intellectual Change at the Paris Goldsmiths鈥� Guild, 1660-1740,鈥� Journal of Early Modern History 22, no. 6 (2018), pp. 500-527
鈥淪tyle and Substance in Rococo Science,鈥� Journal of Interdisciplinary History 48, no. 3 (2017): 359-84.

鈥淚atrochemistry and the Evaluation of Mineral Waters in France, 1600-1770,鈥� in Bulletin for the History of Medicine 91, no. 2 (2017): 303-330, in special issue entitled 鈥淭esting Drugs and Trying Cures鈥�, ed. Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin.
鈥淲hat Difference Does a Translation Make? The Trait茅 des vernis (1723) in the Career of Charles Dufay,鈥� in Translation and the Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern Science, ed. Sietske Fransen and Niall Hodson (Brill, 2017).
鈥淗ow to Save the Symmetry Principle,鈥� in The Philosophy of Historical Case Studies, ed. Raphael Scholl and Tilman Sauer, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science 319 (Springer, 2016).
鈥淒utour et le spath d'Islande: entre l鈥檕ptique et la g茅ologie,鈥� in Etienne-Fran莽ois Dutour de Salvert (1711-1789): un physicien auvergnat du XVIIIe si猫cle, ed. Pierre Cr茅pel and Jean Ehrard (L鈥橦armattan, 2014).
鈥淒utour et l'茅lectricit茅: d茅fendeur habile du syst猫me Nollet,鈥� Etienne-Fran莽ois Dutour de Salvert (1711-1789): un physicien auvergnat du XVIIIe si猫cle, ed. Pierre Cr茅pel and Jean Ehrard (L鈥橦armattan, 2014).
鈥淲onders in the Academy: the Value of Strange Facts in the Experimental Research of Charles Dufay,鈥� Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 43(3) (2013) 334-370.
鈥淭he Trials of Theory: Psychology and Institutionalist Economics, 1910–1931,鈥� Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 46, no. 2 (2010): 144–64.

Selected impact and public engagement

, one-day public symposium at T奴hura, Otago Museum, July 7, 2025

"" [Who's Afraid of Biological Race?], Books no. 123, Jan-Feb 2023

"Down Under: Reflections on a New Zealand Cemetery on the Occasion of the First "Europe in the Making" Lecture for the 2022-23 Academic Year," EMECC blog, October 7, 2022

Los Angeles Review of Books, March 27, 2022

鈥淕alileo and the Telescope,鈥� Modern History Review [for A-level students] 24, no. 1 (Sep. 2021)

Consultant to the curators of the DIVA Diamond Museum, Antwerp, 2016

50+ essays on , a research blog on the history and philosophy of science (2012-2017)

(Catholic Media Council, 2012)

Various reviews of popular science books, published online at www.popularscience.co.uk, 2009–2010

鈥淪cience in the Shadows,鈥� in Chemical Heritage Magazine 28, no. 3 (Fall 2010)

鈥淎dventures in Romantic Science: Richard Holmes on Passion, Teamwork, and the Neglected Art of Biography,鈥� History of Science Society Newsletter 39, no. 1 (2010)

鈥淧erspectives on Science,鈥� History of Science Society Newsletter 39, no. 1 (20

portrait

Boodt crystals

糖心TV

Research centres and networks

Teaching in 2025-26

Past teaching

Career path

Selected publications

Selected impact and public engagement