Dr John Clark
Dr John Clark

John Clark

BA (W. Ontario), MA (Toronto), DPhil (Oxon.) - Lecturer

On Research Leave - Semester 1
Contact Details

E-mail -  jfc2@st-and.ac.uk
Telephone - +44 (0)1334 462910
Fax - +44 (0)1334 462914

 

Teaching and Research Interests

Dr Clark was born and raised in Canada, and educated at the University of Western Ontario (BA Hons), the University of Toronto (MA), and the University of Oxford (DPhil). He held a Canadian SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford before taking up a Wellcome Lectureship in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences at the University of Kent, Canterbury.  He subsequently moved to the University of St Andrews to become director of the Institute for Environmental History, where he oversees the interdisciplinary postgraduate programme in Environmental History, and is a lecturer in the School of History. Within the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, Dr Clark teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and North American history, with special reference to environment, science, and medicine. His research and publications have focused on environmental history, the history of natural history, comparative psychology, gender and science, and the history of medicine. From 2001-5, Dr Clark was the (Associate) Director of the AHRC Research Centre for Environmental History (with Stirling University).  Dr Clark directed a major research initiative in environmental history, focusing upon the history of waste in Britain. This research was organized around three on-going projects: ‘The Language of Waste’; ‘Recycling and Trash Culture’; and ‘The Management of Household Waste in Britain’. Dr Clark continues to work on the history of waste, in addition to a broader research project on the history of environmentalism.

Main Publications

  • Clark, JFM, ‘Patrick Matthew (1790-1874)’, in HCG Matthew, Brian Harrison and Lawrence Goldman (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, forthcoming)
  • Clark, JFM and John Scanlan, eds., The World Turned Inside Out: Modernity and Waste (Cambridge Scholars Press, forthcoming)
     See: http://disconnecting.org/scanlan/inside.html
  • Clark, JFM, ‘Jesse Cooper Dawes (1878-1955)’ in HCG Matthew, Brian Harrison and Lawrence Goldman (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2009)
  • Clark, JFM, Bugs and the Victorians (Yale University Press, 2009), 322 pp
    [More Details]
  • Clark, JFM, ‘Sowing the seeds of economic entomology: the development of medical entomology in Britain’, Parassitologia, 50 (2008)
  • Clark, JFM, ‘In the shadow of progress: the rise of municipal waste disposal in Britain’, in The Environmental Histories of Europe and Japan, ed. Tsunetoshi Mizoguchi (University of Nagoya, 2008), pp. 127-38.
  • Clark, JFM, ‘“The incineration of refuse is beautiful”: Torquay and the introduction of municipal refuse destructors’, Urban History, 34 (August 2007), 254-76.
  • Clark, JFM, ‘“The eyes of our potatoes are weeping”: the rise of the Colorado beetle as insect pest’, Archives of Natural History, 34 (April 2007), 109-28.
  • Clark, JFM, ‘History from the ground up: bugs, political economy, and God in Kirby and Spence’s Introduction to Entomology (1815-1856)’, Isis 97 ( March 2006), 28-55
  • Clark, JFM, ‘The fire sermon: municipal waste incineration in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain’, in Waste – the social context (Conference proceedings, 11-14 May 2005, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: CD-Rom), pp. 140-49.
  • Clark, JFM, ‘Introduction’ to DA Christie and EM Tansey (eds), Environmental Toxicology: The Legacy of Silent Spring, Wellcome Witness to Twentieth Century Medicine, vol 19 (London, 2004), pp v-x
  • Clark, JFM, ‘John Curtis (1791-1862)’, in Bernard Lightman (ed), The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists, 4 vols (London, 2004), i, p. 517
  • Clark, JFM, ‘William Kirby (1759-1850)’, ‘Eleanor Anne Ormerod (1828-1901)’, ‘Edward Bagnall Poulton (1856-1943)’ , in Bernard Lightman (ed), The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists , 4 vols (London, 2004), iii, pp. 1147-1148, 1507-1511, 1618-1619.
  • Clark, JFM, ‘Arthur Everett Shipley (1861-1927)’, ‘William Spence (1782-1860)’, ‘James Francis Stephens (1792-1855)’, ‘John Obadiah Westwood (1805-1893)’, , in Bernard Lightman (ed), The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Scientists , 4 vols (London, 2004), iv, pp. 1814-1815, 1883-1884, 1907-1908, 2136-2137.
  • Clark, JFM, ‘William Platt Ball (1844-1917)’, ‘John Kidd (1775-1851)’, ‘Harold Maxwell Lefroy (1877-1925)’, ‘William Sharp MacLeay (1792-1865)’, ‘Francis Orpen Morris (1810-1893)’, ‘Andrew Murray’ (1812-1878)’, ‘Eleanor Anne Ormerod (1828-1901)’, ‘David Sharp (1840-1922)’, ‘Douglas Alexander Spalding (1841-1877)’, ‘William Spence (1782-1860)’, in HCG Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), New Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols (Oxford, 2004), iii, pp. 577-578; xxxi, pp522-524; xxxiii, pp. 170-171; xxxv, pp. 784-786; xxxix, pp. 270-271, 864-865; xli, pp. 941-944; l, pp. 10-11; li, pp. 743-745, 813-814.
  • Clark, JFM with VB Wigglesworth, ‘Patrick Alfred Buxton (1892-1930)’, in HCG Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), New Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols (Oxford, 2004), ix, pp. 287-289.
  • Clark, JFM with ESP Haynes, ‘Edward Clodd (1840-1930)’, in HCG Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), New Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols (Oxford, 2004), xii, pp. 178-179.
  • Clark, JFM with GC Field, ‘Conwy Lloyd Morgan (1840-1930)’, in HCG Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), New Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols (Oxford, 2004), xxxix, pp. 105-107.
  • Clark, JFM, ‘Bugs in the system: insects, agricultural science, and professional aspirations in Britain, 1890-1920’, Agricultural History, 75 (2001), 83-114
  • Clark, JFM, ‘Ethology and Animal Behaviour’, and ‘Ideology’, in Arne Hessenbruch (ed), Reader’s Guide to the History of Science (London, 2000), pp. 230-232, 367-369.
  • Clark, JFM, ‘The Irishmen of birds’, History Today, 50 (2000), 16-18
  • Clark, JFM, ‘Mirrors to humanity? Historical reflections on culture and social insects’, in Darrell Addison Posey (ed), Cultural and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity (UNEP, 1999), pp. 242-246.
  • Clark, JFM, ‘John Lubbock and mental evolution’, Endeavour, 22 (1998), 44-47.
  • Clark, JFM, ‘“The complete biography of every animal”: ants, bees, and humanity in nineteenth-century England’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 29 (1998), 249-67.
  • Clark, JFM, ‘“The ants were duly visited”: making sense of John Lubbock, scientific naturalism, and the senses of social insects’, British Journal for the History of Science, 30 (1997), 151-176.
  • Clark, JFM, with Alan Costall and Robert H Wozniak, Conwy Lloyd Morgan (1852-1936): an introduction to his work and a bibliography of his writings, Teorie & Modelli, n.s. 2 (1997), 65-92.
  • Clark, JFM, with D Mabberley, J Pickering and S Raphael, Women and Natural History (Oxford, 1996)
  • Clark, JFM, ‘Beetle mania: the Colorado beetle scare of 1877’, History Today, 42 (1992), 5-7
  • Clark, JFM, ‘Eleanor Ormerod (1818-1901) as an economic entomologist: “pioneer of purity even more than of Paris Green”’, British Journal for the History of Science, 30 (1992), 431-452

Book reviews have been written for Annals of Science, Albion, British Journal for the History of Science, and History.

Administrative Duties

Director, Institute for Environmental History

Teaching Duties

Offers the following Honours courses:

Co-teaches the core postgraduate course on historiography and methodology:

Postgraduate Students

Arik Clausner - In Aid of Nation and Empire: The Emergence of the Professional British Entomologist

Main Publications

Bugs and the Victorians