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The connections between science and civic culture in the Victorian period have been extensively, and intensively, investigated over the past several decades. Limited attention, however, has been paid to Irish urban contexts. Roman Catholic attitudes towards science in the nineteenth century have also been neglected beyond a rather restricted set of thinkers and topics. This paper is offered as a contribution to addressing these lacunae, and examines in detail the complexities involved in Catholic engagement with science in Victorian Belfast. The political and civic geographies of Catholic involvement in scientific discussions in a divided town are uncovered through an examination of five episodes in the unfolding history of Belfast's intellectual culture. The paper stresses the importance of attending to the particularities of local politics and scientific debate for understanding the complex realities of Catholic appropriations of science in a period and urban context profoundly shaped by competing political and religious factions. It also reflects more generally on how the Belfast story supplements and challenges scholarship on the historical relations between Catholicism and science.

This article reflects on historical arguments about migration in conceptualisations of Europe, highlighting an ambivalent support of migration within Europe on the grounds of mutual cultural enrichment. There is a strong tradition, dating back to French and German eighteenth-century thinkers, such as Herder, Voltaire and Fichte, of citing cultural diversity, plurality and exchange to construct an idea of Europe. 'Europolitanism', the ideal of Europe as an open space of welcome movement and unprejudiced exchange, conceals, however, exclusionary tendencies: exchange has never been intended for all social groups. Contemporary theorisations of Europe, based ostensibly on cultural exchange, synthesis and plurality, have their roots in Romantic and Enlightenment thought, but then as now there are questions to be asked about participation in pan-European identity formation.