RRobert Willis was a typical nineteenth-century polymath, whose interests stretched from mechanism to medieval architecture, from vowel sounds to vaults and beyond.

Perhaps best known today as a historian of architecture and construction, he was also Jacksonian Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and Professor of Mechanics at the Metropolitan School of Science (Royal School of Mines) in London.

He was an experimentalist, inventor and educational innovator and produced a series of histories of English cathedrals which continue to inspire and inform modern scholars.

By bringing together an international group of experts and enthusiasts from a wide range of disciplines, our symposium aims to explore the diverse yet inter-related aspects of Willis’s career and his significance, both contemporary and to posterity, in Britain and across the world.