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Early Academic Life
He received his Ph.D at Cambridge in 1981 after spending two years studying in the U.S. as a Harkness Fellow. he was then a Junior Research Fellow at St. John’s College, Oxford, for two years before taking up a post in the Department of Philosophy at Stanford University, where he taught until 1996. He then returned to the U.K. to take up posts as Professor of Philosophy in Birkbeck College, University of London, and as a Senior Research Fellow at Exeter. -
2000's
At Exeter he has headed the reintroduction of philosophy, which has been dormant at Exeter since the department was closed in the mid-eighties. Several undergraduate philosophy degrees were launched in 2000, at which time he resigned his chair in London and was appointed at Exeter as Professor of Philosophy of Science. In 2002 he assumed the full-time directorship of Egenis, the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society. -
Making Waves
During the period 1st April to 15th June 2006 he was the Spinoza Visiting Professor at the University of Amsterdam, duties of which included two public lectures as well as leading a series of seminars with staff and graduate students at the University. In Autumn 2013 he spent a term in Cambridge as Diane Middlebrook and Carl Djerassi Visiting Professor of Gender Studies, where he worked on rethinking ideas about sex and gender from a processual perspective. -
Recent Developments
In 2010 he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For 2011-13, he was President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science. From Jan 1, 2019, he has been Vice-President and President-Elect of the Philosophy of Science Association, and he shall be President for 2021-22. In 2020 he was elected an Honorary International Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.