Associate Professor Ian Hesketh
Associate Professor in History and Discipline Convenor
3365 6363
Room E328, Level 3 Forgan Smith Building
Ian Hesketh is Associate Professor of History. Most broadly, his research considers the relationship between history, science, and religion with a focus on nineteenth-century Britain. More specifically, he has written extensively on the Darwinian Revolution, nineteenth-century physics, and large-scale forms of history from the nineteenth century to the present. His latest books include A History of Big History (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and, the edited collection, Imagining the Darwinian Revolution: Historical Narratives of Evolution from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022). He is currently writing a monograph entitled "The Making of Darwin, Darwinians, and Darwinism." He teaches courses on historiography (HIST2312; HUMN6600), revolutions in history (HIST2024), American history (HIST2023), and British history (HIST2417).
Books
Hesketh, Ian (2023). A History of Big History. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781009036399
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 (2024). William Crookes and the Imagined History of Thallium. Reckoning with History: Essays on the Uses of the Past. (pp. 180-202) edited by K. J. Kesselring and Matthew Neufeld. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queens University Press.
Hesketh, Ian (2024). Without a Darwinian clue? Henry Thomas Buckle and the naturalization of history. Victorian interdisciplinarity and the sciences: rethinking the specialization thesis. (pp. 81-96) edited by Bernard Lightman and Efram Sera-Shriar. Pittsburgh, PA, United States: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Hesketh, Ian (2022). Imagining the Darwinian Revolution in the Nineteenth Century. Imagining the Darwinian Revolution: Historical Narratives of Evolution from the Nineteenth Century to the Present. (pp. 21-36) edited by Hesketh, Ian. 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 (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 (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 (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. doi: 10.2307/j.ctv14h5j8.12
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 (2025). Darwin's scientific gardener: John Scott, the 'physiological test' and the importance of character in Victorian science. British Journal for the History of Science, 1-19. doi: 10.1017/s0007087425000226
Hesketh, Ian (2024). Review of Scientific History: Experiments in History and Politics from the Bolshevik Revolution to the End of the Cold War. By Elena Aronova. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. . Journal of Modern History, 96 (3), 695-697. doi: 10.1086/730039
Hesketh, Ian, Barton, Ruth and Richards, Evelleen (2024). Down under Darwin: Australasian perspectives on Darwin studies. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 103, 69-76. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2023.11.004
Hesketh, Ian (2022). Disciplining the Anthropocene. History and Theory, 61 (3), 482-491. doi: 10.1111/hith.12267
Hesketh, Ian (2022). The Psychic Force Serialized: William Crookes and The Quarterly Journal of Science, 1870-1874. Aries, 22 (1), 13-41. doi: 10.1163/15700593-02201002
Hesketh, Ian (2021). What Big History misses. Aeon.
Hesketh, Ian (2021). Joshua Bennett, God and Progress: Religion and History in British Intellectual Culture, 1845-1914. The American Historical Review, 126 (4), 1685-1686. doi: 10.1093/ahr/rhab626
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). 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). The remains of the Freeman–Froude controversy: the religious dimension. Canadian Society of Church History, 211-223.
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 (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
Barnes, Joel and Hesketh, Ian (2024, 04 16). Commemorating Darwin: global perspectives on evolutionary science, religion and politics International Research Network for the Study of Science and Belief in Society
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.