Workshop: Civic Science: Oliver Lodge, Physics and the Modern University

This workshop will investigate both the place of science within the nineteenth-century university and the place of the university in the nineteenth-century city. Lodge spent most of his career at the newly founded University College Liverpool and then the University of Birmingham. This workshop, hosted by the Centre for the Study of Cultural Modernity at the University of Birmingham, considers Lodge’s legacy for the University and Birmingham, as well as the place of science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century university more broadly. By considering physics in the context of the university, this workshop explores both the institutionalisation of science and the place of the university in wider civic life. It will explore how science was taught in the universities and how it was communicated beyond. It will also explore Lodge’s personal and family life, and the way his wife and children were recruited to help him with his civic duties.