Biography and Research

Biography:

After receiving my PhD in Philosophy early in 1999, I worked as a translator and a software engineer. I returned to academia towards the end of 2000 and have, since then, worked at the University of Arkansas, the University of Dundee, the University of Reading, the University of Oxford, the University of Leeds and Eindhoven University of Technology. I have been at the University of Queensland since 2017.

Research interests:

I have published work in epistemology, metaphysics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of science, argumentation theory and the history of philosophy. My main research foci at the moment are the philosophy of science and the history of twentieth century philosophy. In the philosophy of science, I am investigating climate modelling, including its epistemology and theoretical foundations. I have argued that probabilistic assessment of our uncertainty about climate is unreliable and have proposed a possibilist approach as an alternative means of assessing this uncertainty. My work in the history of philosophy documents the way in which analytic philosophy used institutional control to displace rival approaches to philosophy and considers what we might learn from this about the nature of analytic philosophy and about how to approach and organise philosophy. I am currently examining and learning from the work of speculative women philosophers from the first half of the twentieth century. Not unrelated, I am also examining and learning from the work of speculative philosophers of science from the early decades of the twentieth century.