Research
- Social history of science since 1750
- Life and earth sciences
- History of science communication
Publications
Worlds of Natural History, co-edited with Helen Curry, Nicholas Jardine and Emma C. Spary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)
'Global Geology and the Tectonics of Empire', in Worlds of Natural History, co-edited with Helen Curry, Nicholas Jardine and Emma C. Spary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018): 401-417.
'Talking Origins', in Reproduction: From Antiquity to the Present Day, ed. by N. Hopwood, R. Flemming, and L. Kassell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018): 375-389.
Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014; Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press, 2014)
'Scrapbook Science: Composite Carictures in Late Georgian England', Figuring It Out: Science, Gender and Visual Culture, edited by Ann B. Shteir and Bernard Lightman (Hanover, New Hampshire: Dartmouth College Press, 2006): 164–191
'Knowledge in Transit', Isis 95 (2004): 654–672
'Monsters at the Crystal Palace', Models: The Third Dimension of Science, edited by Soraya de Chadarevian and Nick Hopwood (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004): 138–169
Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)
Cultures of Natural History, co-edited with Nicholas Jardine and Emma C. Spary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
'Introduction', Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell (London: Penguin Classics, 1997)
'Introduction', Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and other Evolutionary Writings by Robert Chambers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)
'The Discovery of a Vocation: Charles Darwin's Early Geology', British Journal for the History of Science 24 (1991): 133–157
Controversy in Victorian Geology: The Cambrian-Silurian Dispute (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986)