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Department of History and Philosophy of Science

 

PhD Student

College: Clare

Supervisors: Anna Alexandrova & Jacob Stegenga

Thesis: Measuring Discrimination

Research areas: History and philosophy of social science, social and political philosophy, values in science, causal inference 

How could social scientists do better when grappling with empirical data on inequality? Contemporary social science boasts sophisticated methodologies for establishing evidence of discrimination. Yet the complexity and contested nature of discrimination claims make the quest for numerical precision elusive. Tracing the historical contexts in which dominant measures were developed — and the specific legal, social, and political conflicts they emerged in response to — exposes deep fault lines surrounding exactly which political ideals anti-discrimination norms are meant to embody. My project explores how supposedly neutral technical decisions, like those surrounding dataset construction, variable selection, and choice of outcome measure, serve as a site for the negotiation of these substantive social and political disagreements. 

Teaching

HPS Part II Paper 6: Ethics and Politics of Science, Technology and Medicine
HPS Part II Paper 4: Philosophy of the Biomedical Sciences 

Talks

"Causal Analyses of Discrimination" 

  •  British Society for the Philosophy of Science Conference. University of York (2024)
  •  Society for the Study of Measurement. UC Berkeley (2024)
  •  CEPDISC'24 (Centre for the Empirical and Philosophy Study of Discrimination). Aarhus University (2024).
  • Philosophy of Science Association Biennial Meeting. New Orleans (2024).

"Ideology and Evidence Resistance: on Measuring Depression."

  • Bielefeld Workshop on Philosophy of Psychiatry, Bielefeld University (2024).

Prior Education

BA Philosophy, University of Cambridge 
MSci (Part III) History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge 

 

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