Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
Site search

Associate Professor Ian Hesketh

ARC Future Fellow
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
+61 7 334 67413
View researcher profile
Photo of Ian Hesketh

Engagement activities

Researcher biography

BA (Okanagan University College, Kelowna, BC), MA, PhD (York University, Toronto)

Ian Hesketh is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. Most broadly, his research considers the relationship between history, science, and religion with a focus on nineteenth-century Britain. He is currently working on a large-scale history of the evolutionary epic. In 2017 he was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship for a project entitled "The Place of History in Science: Reassessing the Darwinian Revolution." His latest book, Victorian Jesus, was published in October 2017.
 
A listing of Ian Hesketh's engagement activities can be found here.
Featured projects Duration
The place of history in science: reassessing the Darwinian revolution
ARC Future Fellowship
 2017–2021
Writing History in the Age of the Anthropocene: The Past and Future of Big History (2016–2017)
UQ Foundation
 2016

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Find out more information on how to apply for a Research Higher Degree (MPhil or PhD). For all enquiries regarding research supervision, please contact us.

Publications

Books (3)
Book Chapters (6)
Journal Articles (31)
Newspaper Articles (3)

Books

Hesketh, Ian (2017). Victorian Jesus: J.R. Seeley, religion, and the cultural significance of anonymity. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
Hesketh, Ian (2011). The science of history in Victorian Britain: making the past speak. London United Kingdom: Pickering and Chatto.
Hesketh, Ian (2009). Of apes and ancestors : evolution, Christianity, and the Oxford debate. Toronoto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

Book Chapters

Hesketh, Ian (2019). From Copernicus to Darwin to you: history and the meaning(s) of evolution. Rethinking history, science, and religion: an exploration of conflict and the complexity principle. (pp. 191-205) edited by Bernard Lightman. Pittsburgh, PA, United States: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Hesketh, Ian (2019). Evolution, ethics, and the Metaphysical Society, 1869-1875. The Metaphysical Society (1869-1880): intellectual life in mid-Victorian England. (pp. 185-203) edited by Catherine Marshall, Bernard Lightman and Richard England. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
Hesketh, Ian (2018). The future evolution of "Man". Historicizing humans: deep time, evolution, and race in nineteenth-century British sciences. (pp. 193-217) edited by Efram Sera-Shriar. Pittsburgh, PA USA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Hesketh, Ian (2018). The gendering of history. Gender: time. (pp. 103-115) edited by Karin Sellberg. Farmington Hills, MI United States: Macmillan Reference USA/Gale Group Thomson Learning.
Hesketh, Ian (2015). Fanatical hatred or brotherly love? Rethinking E. A. Freeman's feud with J. A. Froude. Making History: Edward Augustus Freeman and Victorian Cultural Politics. (pp. 255-272) edited by G. A. Bremner and Jonathan Conlin. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.5871/bacad/9780197265871.003.0014
Hesketh, Ian (2013). Frederick Temple and the essays and reviews controversy. Cultural Olympians: Rugby School's intellectual and spiritual leaders. (pp. 123-136) edited by Patrick Derham. London: University of Buckingham Press.

Journal Articles

Hesketh, Ian (2021). Narratives of Charles Darwin down under. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 88, 303-311. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.06.007
Hesketh, Ian (2020). The making of John Tyndall's Darwinian Revolution. Annals of Science, 77 (4), 524-548. doi: 10.1080/00033790.2020.1808243
Hesketh, Ian (2020). The first Darwinian: Alfred Russel Wallace and the meaning of Darwinism. Journal of Victorian Culture, 25 (2), 171-184. doi: 10.1093/jvcult/vcz042
Hesketh, Ian (2019). Technologies of the Scientific Self: John Tyndall and His Journal. Isis, 110 (3), 460-482. doi: 10.1086/704672
Hesketh, Ian (2018). A big history of the future: Homo Deus: a brief history of tomorrow. Sydney Review of Books
Hesketh, Ian (2018). Prodding, proofreading, and persistence; or, tales from an Isis proofreader. Newsletter of the History of Science Society, 47 (2), 8-10.
Hesketh, Ian (2018). John Robert Seeley, natural religion, and the Victorian conflict between science and religion. Journal of the History of Ideas, 79 (2), 309-329. doi: 10.1353/jhi.2018.0018
Hesketh, Ian (2018). Review of: Gillian Beer, Alice in space: the sideways Victorian world of Lewis Carroll. Isis, 109 (1), 189-191.
Hesketh, Ian (2017). The evolutionary epic. Victorian Review, 41 (2), 35-39. doi: 10.1353/vcr.2015.0014
Hesketh, Ian (2017). Darwinism as Religion: What Literature Tells Us About Evolution. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Hesketh, Ian (2016). Review of: Sarah C. Alexander, Victorian literature and the physics of the imponderable. Isis, 107 (4), 868-869. doi: 10.1086/689422
Harrison, Peter and Hesketh, Ian (2016). Introduction: evolution and historical explanation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 58, 1-7. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.12.010
Hesketh, Ian (2016). Counterfactuals and history: contingency and convergence in histories of science and life. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C :Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 58, 41-48. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.12.015
Hesketh, Ian (2015). Review of James Anthony Froude: An Intellectual Biography of a Victorian Prophet. Irish Studies Review, 23 (3), 365-367. doi: 10.1080/09670882.2015.1051763
Hesketh, Ian (2015). Review of: On Historical Distance by Mark Salber Phillips. Histoire sociale/Social history, 47 (96), 333-335. doi: 10.1353/his.2015.0009
Hesketh, Ian (2015). A good Darwinian? Winwood Reade and the making of a late Victorian evolutionary epic. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 51, 44-52. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.01.013
Hesketh, Ian and Peden, Knox (2015). The Aesthetics of Scale. Journal of the Philosophy of History, 9 (2), 169-175. doi: 10.1163/18722636-12341298
Hesketh, Ian (2015). The recurrence of the evolutionary epic. Journal of the Philosophy of History, 9 (2), 196-219. doi: 10.1163/18722636-12341300
Hesketh, Ian (2014). The story of Big History. History of the Present, 4 (2), 171-202. doi: 10.5406/historypresent.4.2.0171
Hesketh, Ian (2014). Darwinian we are not: counterfactualism as the natural course of history. History and Theory, 53 (2), 295-303. doi: 10.1111/hith.10712
Hesketh, Ian (2014). "History is past politics, and politics present history': who said it?. Notes and Queries, 61 (1), 105-108. doi: 10.1093/notesj/gjt244
Hesketh, Ian (2012). Review of: Edward Adams, liberal epic: the Victorian practice of history from Gibbon to Churchill. Journal of British Studies, 51 (3), 750-752. doi: 10.1086/665393
Hesketh, Ian (2012). Review of: Theodore Koditschek, Liberalism, imperialism, and the historical imagination: nineteenth-century visions of a greater Britain. Victorian Review, 38 (2)
Hesketh, Ian (2012). Behold the (Anonymous) man: J. R. Seeley and Ecce Homo. Victorian Review, 38 (1), 93-112. doi: 10.1353/vcr.2012.0044
Hesketh, Ian (2011). Weapons of another kind: Henry Thomas Buckle and the case of Thomas Pooley. Left History, 15 (1), 87-110.
Hesketh, Ian (2011). Writing history in Macaulay’s Shadow: J.R. Seeley, E.A. Freeman, and the audience for scientific history in late Victorian Britain. Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, 22 (2), 30-56. doi: 10.7202/1008977ar
Hesketh, Ian (2011). The remains of the Freeman–Froude controversy: the religious dimension. Canadian Society of Church History, 211-223.
Hesketh, Ian (2010). Reflections on the Origin’s anniversary and the perpetuation of an eternal myth. University of Toronto Press Blog
Hesketh, Ian (2010). Review of: Cosmopolitan Islanders: British Historians and the European Continent. Canadian Journal of History, 45 (3), 621-622.
Hesketh, Ian (2008). Diagnosing Froude's disease: boundary work and the discipline of history in late-Victorian Britain. History and Theory, 47 (3), 373-395. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2008.00460.x
Hesketh, Ian (2008). Review of: Frontiers of history: historical inquiry in the twentieth century. Canadian Journal of History, 43 (1), 209-211.

Newspaper Articles

Hesketh, Ian and Meiring, Henry-James (2021, 02 25). Guide to the classics: Darwin’s The Descent of Man 150 years on — sex, race and our ‘lowly’ ape ancestry The Conversation
Hesketh, Ian (2020, 04 20). How a 150-year-old experiment with a beam of light showed germs exist – and that a face mask can help filter them out The Conversation
Hesketh, Ian (2020, 01 29). How Darwin’s sexual selection theory co-stars in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ The Conversation 1-1.

Areas of research

Intellectual and Literary History