Dr Alexander Hall

Dr Alexander Hall

College of Arts and Law
Research Fellow

Contact details

Email
a.f.hall@bham.ac.uk
Twitter
@Green_Gambit
View my research portal

Qualifications

  • PhD, History of Science, University of Manchester, 2013 
  • MSc (Distinction), Research Methods in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester, 2009
  • BSc (1st class honours), Environmental Studies, University of Manchester, 2008

Biography

Dr Alexander Hall is a historian of science and environmental historian who researches the history of science in popular media; exploring how scientists have gained positions of expertise in society, used the media to communicate complex theories to the public, and how non-scientific understandings of the natural environment have interacted with scientific knowledge. He is a Research Fellow on the large multidisciplinary project ‘Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum’; and Co-PI on the International Research Network for the Study of Science and Belief in Society project both based at the University of Birmingham.

Dr Hall is also a part of the Birmingham Plastics Network, an interdisciplinary team of more than 40 academics working together to shape the fate and sustainable future of plastics. This unique team brings together chemists, environmental scientists, engineers, philosophers, linguists, economists, artists, writers, lawyers, and experts in many other fields, to holistically address the global plastics problem.

He is currently the President of the International Commission for the History of Meteorology and the History of Science Section Recorder for the British Science Association. 

 

Postgraduate supervision

Twentieth-century histories and media studies on:

Science communication and popular science
Belief and/or trust in science
Science on television and radio
The development of the environmental sciences
Weather, climate and natural disasters
In particular I am interested in taking on postgraduate students who are interested in digital and mixed methodological approaches, and research that straddles the humanities/science divide.

Find out more - our PhD Theology and Religion  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

I have a broad range of research interests, including, but not limited to:

  • the history of science on television and radio
  • history of science communication
  • cultural and societal understandings of meteorology, weather and climate
  • histories of the environmental sciences and environmental policy
  • environmental histories of flooding and landscape

Other activities

Publications

Monograph

  • Transmissions & Transmutations: The story of evolution on British television and radio (In preparation)

Peer reviewed articles

  • Alexander Hall, “Framing the Sky: The (re)Birth of Weather Forecasting on British Television,” Archives des Sciences, 69 (2017), 57-66
  • Alexander Hall and Georgina Endfield, “Snow Scenes: Exploring the role of memory and place in commemorating extreme winters,” Weather, Climate and Society, 8 (2016), 5-19
  • Georgina Endfield, Lucy Veale and Alexander Hall, “Gordon Valentine Manley and his contribution to the   study of climate change: a review of his life and work,” WIREs Climate Change, 6:3 (2015), 287-   299
  • Alexander Hall, “From the airfield to the high-street: The UK Met Office’s role in the emergence of commercial weather services,” Weather, Climate and Society, 7:3 (2015), 211-223
  • Alexander Hall, “Plugging the Gaps: The North Sea Flood of 1953 and the Creation of a National Coastal Warning System,” The Journal of Public Management and Social Policy, 22:2 (2015), 1-20
  • Alexander Hall, “Geographers, Stats-men and Sages: Approaches to Climatology in Britain post-1945,” History of Meteorology, 7 (2015), 71-82
  • Alexander Hall, “The Rise of Blame and Recreancy in the United Kingdom- A Cultural, Political and Scientific autopsy of the North Sea flood of 1953,” Environment and History, 17:3, (2011) 379-408

Chapters in edited collections/encyclopaedias

  • Alexander Hall, “Historical understandings of weather and society, from the everyday to the extreme”, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
  • Alexander Hall, “Evolution on the small-screen: reflections on media, science and religion in twentieth-century Britain,” in Lightman B. and Elsdon-Baker F. (Eds) Science and Religion: Exploring the Spectrum (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming)
  • Alexander Hall, “A Humanist Blockbuster? Jacob Bronowski and The Ascent of Man,” in Lightman B. (Ed) Science and Religion: Exploring the Complexity Thesis (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming 2019)
  • Alexander Hall, “Remembering in God’s name: the role of the church and community institutions in the aftermath and commemoration of floods,” in Endfield G. and Veale L. (Eds) Cultural Histories, Memories and Extreme Weather (London: Routledge, 2017)

View all publications in research portal