Career
MacLeod was appointed to the first Junior Research Fellowship in History at Churchill College, Cambridge in 1966, a position he held until 1970. Whilst at Cambridge, he was invited to a visiting chair in Victorian Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he introduced students to Darwinian studies and the history of the scientific movement in 19th century England. In 1966, following an invitation from Asa Briggs, he was appointed a Research Fellow in Social Sciences at the new University of Sussex, where he soon became a founding Fellow of the new Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU). In 1970, he was appointed foundation Reader in the History and Philosophy of Science at Sussex, where he established a new subject group in the History and Social Studies of Science (HSSS).
In 1971, MacLeod launched at HSSS one of the first graduate degrees in 'Science Studies' in England, which, by 1979, had graduated over 100 students - and co-founded the academic journal Social Studies of Science, which focused on the history, politics and sociology of science and technology, and is today among the most cited journals in the field. MacLeod served as co-editor, with David Edge of Edinburgh, for the next 21 years, standing down in 1992.
Also in 1971, he was appointed a Directeur d'Etudes Associé at the École des Hautes Ḗtudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and, with Gerard Lemaine, and Clemens Heller, worked at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. There, he co-founded Project PAREX (Paris-Sussex) for the collaborative study of the history and sociology of science in Europe. In 1973–74, he served as a visiting professor of Science and Society at the Free University in Amsterdam, and established a network of scholars that, by the 1980s, helped to form the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology. In 1976–77, MacLeod was a visiting fellow at the Charles Warren Center for studies in American History at Harvard University, where he wrote on the relation between science, the "research ideal", and the history of universities in America.
In 1978 MacLeod moved from the University of Sussex to the foundation chair of Science Education at the Institute of Education in the University of London where he introduced the history of science and higher degrees in Health Education and Environmental Education, and oversaw the introduction of classroom computers in secondary schools across London and the Southeast of England. In 1980, he was appointed a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, where he wrote on military history and modern statecraft. He subsequently wrote extensively on the experience of science and scientists during and after the Great War, and on the effects of science on colonial expansion and globalisation.
In 1982, MacLeod was invited to Australia as professor of history at the University of Sydney, where he remained for the next 21 years. There he began new courses in imperial history and museum studies, established a Centre for Human Aspects of Science and Technology (CHAST), and contributed to the establishment of the university's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPAC), its Research Institute on Asia and the Pacific (RIAP), and its Centre for International Security Studies (CISS).
Whilst at Sydney, MacLeod also taught undergraduate, honours and master's courses in social, economic, and cultural history; Australian and Commonwealth history; medical history; military history; nuclear history; the history of higher education; and the history of science and technology in Europe, India, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific.
In 1985, with Philip Rehbock, he co-founded the Pacific Circle, a scientific commission of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science, and launched the Pacific Circle Bulletin, based in Honolulu, as a means of encouraging research in the history of the natural and social sciences across the Ocean and around the Rim.
In 2000 working from Sydney, MacLeod became editor-in-chief of the academic journal Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy, and served in that position until 2008. In this role, he broadened the scope and compass of the journal to embrace the new field of ‘Science and Technology Studies’ (STS) and to reach a global readership.
In 2003, following his formal retirement from the University of Sydney, he was appointed emeritus professor of history, and he has remained in the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry (SOPHI). He is also an honorary professor at the university's Centre for International Security Studies, an honorary associate in the School of History and Philosophy of Science, and an honorary member of the Sydney Nano Institute.
MacLeod has held a number of visiting positions ― at Indiana, Harvard, UC Santa Cruz, UBC, Stockholm, Bolongna, Florence, Paris, Oxford and Cambridge. In 2010, he held the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the National Air and Space Museum (part of the Smithsonian Institution) in Washington D.C.. In 2011 and again in 2012, he was a Fellow of the Lichtenberg Kolleg of the University of Göttingen. He held the Keeley Visiting Fellowship at Wadham College, Oxford in 2013, and a Wellcome Trust Fellowship at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2017. He has also been a visiting senior fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford and St John's College, Oxford, and a Fowler Hamilton Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford. In 2001, he was awarded a Research Prize by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which took him to the University of Heidelberg, and in 2017 he was a Humboldt Alumni Fellow at the University of Hamburg and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
In 2021, under the auspices of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, MacLeod co-convened and presented a nine-part webinar series on 'Australia's Future in Space: Making SPACE for the Social Sciences'.
Distinctions and awards
Roy MacLeod is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Royal Historical Society, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the International Academy of the History of Science, and the Royal Society of New South Wales. He has twice been a Fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in the United States (now the Science History Institute).
In 2001 he was awarded the Doctor of Letters degree by Cambridge University. In the same year he was awarded a Centenary Medal for services to History by the Australian government.
In 2005, for services to the Faculty of Letters, he received a doctorate of letters, honoris causa from the University of Bologna.
MacLeod received the Sarton Medal as Sarton Chair of History of Science, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Ghent University, Belgium between 2014 and 2015 In 2017, he received the History of Philosophy and Science Medal from the Royal Society of New South Wales.
In the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to education, particularly to history. In 2022, in recognition of his life-time contributions to teaching and research, the University of Sussex conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of the University. In 2023, he was appointed a Fellow of the International Science Council.
