Research

Most of my research is on philosophy of physics, driven and informed by questions from the history of science and (feminist) philosophy of science more broadly, as well as theoretical and mathematical physics.

My main research area and the subject of my dissertation is the history and philosophy of the quantum field theories (QFTs) that underpin the standard model of particle physics (SM). Throughout their history, QFTs and their practitioners have navigated the tension between their remarkable and unprecedented empirical success and a series of internal conceptual, mathematical, and philosophical pathologies, some of which have been severe enough to threaten QFT’s viability. Why do these theories work so well despite these difficulties? How did these theories and the techniques developed to study them develop and consolidate? Answering these questions requires attention to ground-level technical details of QFT as well as to larger debates in the history and philosophy of science about realism, theory change, and the nature and function of approximations.

"The (beta-)decay of effective realism" (draft available upon request)

Abstract: I argue that effective realism's (ER's) selective realist strategy for responding to the pessimistic meta-induction is too stringent because it commits only to renormalizable quantum field theories. I then argue that there's no context-independent way to interpret non-renormalizable theories, so any overhaul of ER in response to my objection must grapple with pragmatic considerations both for choosing an appropriate selective strategy and for choosing suitable realist commitments once a selective strategy is in place. While these pragmatic considerations aren't incompatible with realism, they push ER to clarify whether their view remains viable as a form of selective realism.

"'Profound results from not-very-profound properties': The renormalization-group route to asymptotic freedom" (under review, draft available upon request)

Abstract: This paper traces how Kenneth Wilson and Kurt Symanzik extended the renormalization group (RG) techniques developed by Murray Gell-Mann and Francis Low in the early 1950s, reshaping quantum field theory’s (QFT’s) approach to the nucleus and laying the groundwork for the discovery of asymptotic freedom (AF) in the early 1970s. I focus on Wilson’s development of the operator product expansion, a central tool in contemporary QFT that has been historiographically underexplored compared to the genealogy of the Wilsonian RG, and on Symanzik’s derivation of what is now known as the Callan-Symanzik equation. I also discuss how Wilson’s and Symanzik’s work fits into the prehistory of AF, which remains underexplored despite its prominent role in QFT’s consolidation as the framework for particle physics. Throughout the paper, I emphasize the role of perturbation theory (PT) and approximations, as well as Wilson and Symanzik’s attempts to circumscribe and transgress PT’s domain of applicability.

My secondary research area within the philosophy of physics focuses on how the mathematical structures of quantum theories codify their physical content and on exploring more appropriate ways to do so. You can find my publications in this area here.

Aside from philosophy and the history of physics, I've worked on:

Early Greek science, particularly that practiced by the Presocratics and Hippocratic doctors, for a book chapter surveying early Greek science and its traces on Aristophanes’ Clouds, titled “El ‘Sócrates presocrático’ de Las Nubes de Aristófanes” [The ‘Presocratic Socrates’ in Aristophanes’ Clouds], as a commentary essay to a translation I did with my undergraduate Greek translation group back in Colombia.
Inclusive pedagogies in and for philosophy, primarily in courses considered “technical” (e.g., formal methods, logic, and philosophy of physics). Thomas Colclough, Helen Meskhidze, and I designed and ran a study in two formal logic courses, implementing interventions informed by inclusive pedagogies, which we discuss in our “Feminist and Trauma-Informed Approaches to Teaching Formal Philosophy” (forthcoming in Hypatia). See also our “Changing the Way We Teach Formal Philosophy” for a summary of the project in the Women in Philosophy Series of the APA blog.

At the 2022 Philosophy of Science Association conference. Picture by Sebastián Murgueitio Ramírez.

At the 2024 Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice conference. Picture by Manuela Fernández Pinto.