Dr Alexander Hall

Dr Alexander Hall

Department of Theology and Religion
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’ based at the University of Birmingham.

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.

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