The project

'Observatory Sites and Networks since 1780' was undertaken from September 2021 to February 2023 and was led by Royal Museums Greenwich and National Museums Scotland, together with project partners Cambridge University Library, the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, and Armagh Observatory and Planetarium. It was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

This research networking project consisted of four workshops held both online and at historic observatory sites across the UK, bringing together both British and international scholars who research observatory histories along with curators, educators, astronomers and others who work at similar locations.

Themes of the workshops

1) 'Absorbing, adapting and influencing new technologies': exploring the processes by which new disciplines, techniques and instrumentation were taken up within observatories in the 19th and 20th centuries and how they were influenced by local, national, imperial and international contexts.

2) 'Living and working at the observatory': considering observatories as workplaces and homes, investigating the experiences and opportunities of the men, women and children connected to them, from directors and assistants to families and hired labour.

3) 'Historic observatory networks': exploring connections between observatories, which relied on the circulation of knowledge, texts, instruments and people, and the relationships between national, provincial, colonial and amateur observatories.

4) 'Contemporary observatory networks': focusing on current opportunities and challenges in the preservation and interpretation of observatory sites, learning from previous experience and drawing on the histories explored in the previous workshops.

Find out more

'Absorbing, adapting and influencing new technologies'

The first workshop as part of the Observatory Networks initiative

‘Living and working at the observatory’

The second workshop as part of the Observatory Networks initiative

'Historic Observatory Networks’

The third workshop as part of the Observatory Networks initiative

'Contemporary Observatory Networks'

The fourth and final workshop as part of the Observatory Networks initiative

Our outputs

  • We engaged with 250 participants from 27 countries.
  • We funded 10 students to attend the workshops in person to enhance networking opportunities.
  • All members of the project team have given various academic and public talks about themes discussed at the workshops.
  • We are currently in the process of assembling a suite of articles for publication; we will announce more details via our Twitter feed and the mailing list.
  • Our mailing list will be an essential way for participants and other researchers to share ideas and research requests with the community, feel free to join us via JISCMail

Project Team

Principal Investigator (PI): Dr Louise Devoy, Senior Curator: Royal Observatory, Greenwich

Co-Investigator (Co-I): Dr Rebekah Higgitt, Principal Curator of Science, National Museums Scotland

Dr Daniel Belteki, Sackler ROG 350 Research Fellow, Royal Museums Greenwich

Dr Lee Macdonald, Sackler ROG 350 Research Fellow, Royal Museums Greenwich

A group of people stand in front of a blue background
The Project Team and some of the Advisory Group members at Workshop 4: 'Contemporary Observatory Networks'. Image courtesy of Armagh Observatory and Planetarium

Academic Advisory Group

Dr Ileana Chinnici, INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo, Italy

Professor Omar Nasim, University of Regensburg, Germany

Dr Pedro Raposo, Curator and Director of Collections, Adler Planetarium, USA

Professor Simon Schaffer, University of Cambridge, UK

Contact

Project Administrator, Royal Museums Greenwich Sally Archer: sarcher@rmg.co.uk

Stay up to date

Our mailing list will be the main communication channel for future announcements but please do take a look at @ObservatoryNet on Twitter to see previous posts from the workshops.

Funders