Graeme Gooday

Profile

History of Electrical Technology, especially Telecommunications and hearing loss, gender and technology, women in engineering, histories of patenting, the philosophy of technology.

Graeme Gooday joined the University of Leeds in August 1994, following postdoctoral research posts in history of science and technology at the Universities of Kent and Oxford.

Broadly interested in the history of technology post-1870, his current research focuses on the cultural history of electrical technology, especially relating the problematic advent of electric lighting, disputes over patenting, hearing loss, and auditory enhancement.

A dedicated teacher, I have won prizes for educational work from the History of Science Society, the UK's Higher Education Academy and the University of Leeds.

In 2019-20 he led the AHRC Engagement and Impact project ‘Electrifying Women  to mark the centenary of the UK’s Women’s Engineering Society in 2019

From 1 September 2007 he led a collaborative Arts and Humanities Research Council funded 3-year project 'Owning and Disowning Invention: Intellectual Property, Authority and Identity in British Science and Technology, 1880-1920', and from 2013 was principal investigator on the AHRC project 'Innovating in Combat: Telecommunications and intellectual property in the First World War'. More recently (2016-17), Graeme was the principal investigator on the AHRC-funded project 'Electrifying the country house: Educational resources on the history of domestic electricity', as well as co-investigator (2015-17) on the AHRC project 'Making Waves Oliver Lodge and the Cultures of Science, 1875-1940'.   His most recent project has been the AHRC Impact and Engagement project: ‘Electrifying Women; Understanding the Long History of Women in Engineering’

Graeme was joint winner of the British Society for History of Science Pickstone Prize 2014, which honours the best recent scholarly book in the history of science, medicine and technology.

"The list of shortlisted books for the 2014 Pickstone Prize was exceptionally strong.  But in the end one book stood out: Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain, by Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday (MIT, 2013).”

The Prize Committee’s commendation can be read in full here.

More recent work has been on the history of hearing loss, writing in collaboration with Action on Hearing Loss and the Thackray Medical Museum

Co-authored with Karen Sayer (Leeds Trinity University) he published  Managing the Experience of Hearing Loss in Britain, 1830-1930  (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)  

Two works most recently published:  Graeme Gooday and Steven Wilf (editors): Patent Cultures: Diversity and Harmonization in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press 2020)

and James Mussell & Graeme Gooday (editors) A Pioneer of Connection: Recovering the Life and Work of Oliver Lodge (University of Pittsburgh, 2020)

Responsibilities

• Director of Impact

Research interests

Electrifying Women

• Innovating in Combat: Telecommunications and Intellectual Property in the First World War

Qualifications

• PhD University of Kent
• BA (Natural Sciences) University of Cambridge

Research groups and institutes

• History and Philosophy of Science

Current postgraduate researchers

• Rosanna Evans
• Rachel Garratt
• Alexandra Rose
• Kaija-Liisa Koovit
• Joshua Hillman
• Isobel Newby
• Louise Bell
• Grace Exley