Professor of the History of Science · University of Regensburg
Uncovering the invisible labor, marginalized practices, and overlooked technologies that have shaped the making of scientific knowledge — from hand-drawn nebular sketches to the photographic glass plates of global observatories.
"History is full of contingencies and surprises. The history of science is no exception."
Omar W. Nasim is an award-winning historian of science and technology, trained in philosophy and physics at the University of Manitoba and the University of Toronto. His interdisciplinary research reveals how the marginalized, invisible, and overlooked have shaped the practices, labor, and personnel of science — right down to its gestures and techniques.
His work centers on the epistemic cultures of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century astronomy in American, British, and European contexts, while extending into the histories of technology, art, imperialism, colonialism, visual culture, material culture, gender, and race. He is especially known for shifting attention from scientific end-products to the painstaking processes behind them — from pencil-drawn nebular sketches to the complex life of photographic glass plates in observatory networks.
Nasim has worked at institutions across six countries, holds the Chair of the History of Science at the University of Regensburg, and has been honored with fellowships at Oxford, Amsterdam, the Max Planck Institute, ETH-Zürich, and Case Western Reserve University.
The first systematic historical investigation into how photographic glass plates were not merely two-dimensional images, but three-dimensional objects actively labored with — stored, handled, annotated, and remediated — at observatories across the globe. Based on 36 archives in Europe and the Americas, many of which remain untouched by historians for nearly half a century. Funded by a €429,950 DFG Research Grant.
Current Book ProjectThe first book-length study connecting the history of science to the technologies of seat-furniture. Mechanically adjustable observing chairs become a lens onto the moral economies of nineteenth-century science — revealing how comfort, posture, masculinity, and orientalized otherness shaped the very act of astronomical observation, before extending these findings to Freud's famous psychoanalytic couch.
Keynote: Notre Dame · Columbia · Manchester LaunchesThrough meticulous examination of hundreds of unpublished observing notebooks from six major astronomical observers, this book reveals how pencil, paper, and disciplined gesture were essential technologies of astronomical observation — not subjective hindrances, but the very means by which astronomers made out what they saw at the telescope across years of painstaking paperwork.
HSS Pfizer Prize · CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title"This creatively illustrated study uses a seemingly mundane theme to reveal with startling insight the complex cultures of comfort, attention, and discipline that governed nineteenth-century stargazing."— Simon Schaffer, Professor of History of Science, University of Cambridge
Recovering the painstaking, often gendered and classed labor that underpins scientific knowledge production — from hand-drawing to plate-measuring — and challenging the rhetoric of mechanization and automation that has long obscured it.
Treating images and objects together as part of interconnected moral and visual economies. Science's things — chairs, notebooks, glass plates — are sites where cultural values and epistemic assumptions are embedded and reproduced.
A decade-long project spanning 36 archives across Europe and North America, examining how photographic glass plates were produced, handled, stored, annotated, and circulated in global observatory networks between 1850 and 1950.
Investigating how colonial structures shaped scientific tools and practices — from orientalized observing postures to the racialized underpinnings of optical illusions used as "neutral" tools in contemporary neuroscience research.
Using technique, technê, and Technik as entry points into the history of science — especially how observation is mediated by inscription technologies, from pencil and paper to the gelatin silver emulsion of photographic glass plates.
Early work situating Bertrand Russell within a forgotten British controversy shaped the approach. An ongoing $500,000 international project now treats scientism as a global ideology tied to empire, technocracy, and the exclusion of indigenous knowledges.
The culminating book of a decade of archival work across Germany, the USA, Scotland, England, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, and Austria — untouched by historians for nearly half a century. Observing by Light will be the first historical study of photography in the sciences to theorize photographs as three-dimensional research objects, situating their laborious handling within global networks of industry, empire, and observatory life.
For a full list of publications, reviews, and co-edited volumes, visit omarnasim.com ↗
Three-year term, 2024–2027
Case Western Reserve University, USA
"Astronomy's Glass Archive: Photographic Practices in the Observatory, 1850–1950"
"The Scientism Project: A Global History" (collaborative, Case Western Reserve)
History of Science Society · For Observing by Hand
Categories: Art History of Science · Philosophy of Science · Physical Science
School of History, University of Oxford · £100,000
For Bertrand Russell and the Edwardian Philosophers
With award-winning teaching experience across six countries, Nasim's pedagogy acts as a bridge between the sciences and humanities. His approach combines close-reading of objects, images, and concepts; non-linear thematic approaches to global history; and a sustained engagement with science and technology as products of culture, labor, and power. His courses draw students from physics, philosophy, fine arts, medicine, engineering, and literature — sharing a common ground where the big questions stand before all.
"History came alive that day."— Student, after an impromptu iconographic analysis of a Munich museum façade
Currently overseeing the Masters Programme in the History of Science at the University of Regensburg — until recently the only such programme in Germany — as well as supervising doctoral candidates and postdoctoral researchers whose work spans microscopy, agricultural chemistry, scientific personae, and the history of genetics.