Chris Renwick

Biography

Chris Renwick is a historian of Britain since the early nineteenth century. His main area of expertise is the relationship between biology, social science, and politics, in particular how the interaction of the three has shaped the way we think about, study, and govern society. His work on these subjects has received international and interdisciplinary recognition. He was given the Forum for the History of the Human Science’s prestigious John C. Burnham Early Career Award in 2012 and his first book was shortlisted for the British Sociological Association’s Philip Abrams Memorial Prize in 2013.

Research Interest

Chris’ first book, British Sociology’s Lost Biological Roots: A History of Futures Past(Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), recovered the forgotten history of British sociologists’ engagement with biology during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As well as uncovering fraught behind-the-scenes debates about the role of biology in social science, the book explored the research programmes and agendas that British sociologists rejected during the founding debates about their discipline. In so doing, the book considered how the field might have been different and what that tells us about the kind of sociology we came to have in the UK.