Richard Staley

Richard Staley is the Hans Rausing Lecturer and Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, maintaining dual faculty appointments with the University of Copenhagen. His interdisciplinary research bridges physics history, anthropology, and climate science, examining cultural contexts of scientific development through major collaborative projects.

Staley's educational background includes an undergraduate degree in History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) from the University of Melbourne and a PhD from Cambridge (1992) on Max Born's early work. His research trajectory evolved from examining physics-education relations to expansive projects on physicist anthropologies, interwar mechanics, and contemporary climate/AI histories.

His primary research areas focus on the cultural history of mechanics, relations between physics and anthropology (particularly Mach-Boas-Malinowski connections), and historical perspectives on climate change. Recent work emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches through the Leverhulme Trust's "Making Climate History" project (2019-2024), which analyzes two centuries of climate science development, and the Mellon Foundation's "Histories of Artificial Intelligence" seminar (2020-2021), which established historical frameworks for understanding AI's societal impacts.

Analysis of Staley's 15 most recent publications (2011-2023) reveals a clear scholarly evolution: early works centered on relativity/quantum foundations and Mach's legacy, while post-2017 outputs increasingly engage climate history and AI studies. His methodology consistently examines scientific knowledge through cultural, social, and economic lenses, with recurring attention to Ernst Mach's relational physics and interdisciplinary knowledge transfer.

Staley has supervised diverse graduate research topics including radiation history, cosmology, AI development, and environmental studies in South Africa. His major funded projects demonstrate significant grant acquisition success:

• Leverhulme Trust (2019-2024): "Making Climate History" - examining social/physical/economic timescales of climate change
• Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar (2020-2021): "Histories of Artificial Intelligence: A Genealogy of Power" - developing historical frameworks for AI understanding

He collaborates extensively across Cambridge departments (HPS, English, Geography) and institutions, working with the Niels Bohr Archive and curating Whipple Museum exhibitions like 'Empires of Physics' and '1900: The New Age'. His current work integrates climate history with AI genealogy studies, emphasizing historical perspectives on contemporary scientific challenges.