The contentious science of phrenology once promised insight into character and intellect through external 'reading' of the head. In the transforming settler-colonial landscapes of nineteenth-century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, popular phrenologists – figures who often hailed from the margins – performed their science of touch and cranial jargon everywhere from mechanics' institutions to public houses. In this compelling work, Alexandra Roginski recounts a history of this everyday practice, exploring how it featured in the fates of people living in, and moving through, the Tasman World. Innovatively drawing on historical newspapers and a network of archives, she traces the careers of a diverse range of popular phrenologists and those they encountered. By analysing the actions at play in scientific episodes through ethnographic, social and cultural history, Roginski considers how this now-discredited science could, in its own day, yield fleeting power and advantage, even against a backdrop of large-scale dispossession and social brittleness.

Honorable Mention, 2023 Best Books, Australian Book Review

Winner, 2024 Donna Coates Book Prize, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand Studies Network

Highly recommended, 2024 AHA Ernest Scott Prize for History, The University of Melbourne

‘Marvellous! Roginski puts phrenology into colonial life with skill, elegance and deep scholarly commitment. The spaces, people and knowledges here - vernacular, itinerant, antipodean - make us think freshly about popular sciences and their nineteenth-century performances.’

Alison Bashford - University of New South Wales

‘Roginski’s lively account of popular phrenology in the nineteenth century Tasman world illuminates the role of neglected historical figures. Not only does she discuss how head reading was seen as important by white, male practitioners for the future of their race, she also shows how female, black, and Māori phrenologists appropriated it for their own purposes.’

Bernard Lightman - York University, Canada

‘Alexandra Roginski’s book is a rich and thoughtful study of knowledge-making and science on the move. Sensitive to the particularities of place, she offers a reading of colonial science in Australasia that traces the centrality of difference in the construction and performance of knowledge in the bush, in towns, and growing cities. This book immerses us in a world of popular science and dramatizes the importance of phrenology in struggles over power, authority and cultural identity at the edge of the British empire.’

Tony Ballantyne - University of Otago

‘… a rich, enthralling account of the popular science of phrenology and its shadowy practitioners.’

Penny Russell Source: Australian Book Review

‘This remarkable, lively book combines sparkling prose with impressive research and a methodology that is at once empathetic and incisive.’

Jeremy Martens Source: Australian Historical Studies