Summary: The project will investigate the 1959 centenary of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and the development of its associated literature, in comparative and global context. The centenary was at once a moment of commemoration of a major event in the history of science, an episode in the public legitimation of the new genetic biology (the ‘modern synthesis’), and a foundational moment in the development of the so-called ‘Darwin Industry’. It engendered much discussion and debate about the relationship between evolution and religious belief that went on to inform and shape prevailing cultural narratives of conflict, but also narratives of complementarity and complexity. The project will therefore ask: How was the centenary commemorated in different national and disciplinary contexts, and how were relations between science and belief understood in each of these? How were the interpretations and presuppositions of the ‘Darwin Industry’, including regarding religious belief, established in