Research

Thanks to a series of academic and policy opportunities, I’ve been able to work on a variety of multidisciplinary research topics, using a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods. This page briefly describes some of my major research interests, including links to relevant publications. A full list of papers and other research outputs can be found on my ORCID profile.

Last updated 27 June 2019.

Academic institutional effectiveness

Conceptual frameworks from philosophy of science, science and technology studies, and science policy; analytic methods from statistics and data science; and institutional data sources can be combined to support understanding of how science operates. Some of the specific questions I’ve examined in this area include:

  • Is novel toxicological research at the Environmental Protection Agency integrated into the broader research community?
  • How have interdisciplinary funding programs fostered novel collaborations in fields such as robotics and genomics?
  • What factors predict whether underrepresented groups will major in philosophy?
  • What conceptual frameworks can be used to understand the academic politics of research metrics?
  • How can article metadata and text mining methods be used to uncover forgotten contributions of women to philosophy of science?

Selected publications

Public scientific controversies

Public scientific controversies are my entry point into discussions of science policy and the role of expertise in democracy. Traditional models of such controversies focus on gaps between “scientists” and “the public,” and explain these gaps in terms of public ignorance and irrationality. In contrast, my approach to these controversies are based on ideas of power, structural oppression, and democratic accountability, in line with my background in feminist philosophy of science and political philosophy.

I am interested in many different specific issues that fall under the heading of “public scientific controversies.” Some of my current work in this area addresses ideals of transparency and fairness in algorithmic injustice, as well as controversies over obesity and pesticide regulation. My publications in this area are often written for policy audiences and published in venues beyond academic philosophy.

Selected publications

Science and values

This is the most disciplinary or narrowly philosophical topic among my major research interests. My dissertation (Notre Dame 2012) developed Alasdair MacIntyre’s conception of a social practice, informed by feminist philosophy, and applied this conception to the then-current debate over the ideal of value-free science. Since finishing my dissertation, I’ve become known for defending a distinctively Aristotelean version of the “aims approach” to values in science.

Due to the nature of my employment over the last several years, I’ve been unable to devote much time to narrowly philosophical work. I have been able to give presentations in which I apply and defend my version of the “aims approach” to topics such as academic freedom and “dangerous ideas,” open science, and objectivity. I intend to write up and publish these talks over the next few years.