Heather Demarest
- Assistant Professor
- Chair, Committee on the History and Philosophy of Science
Heather Demarest (PhD, Rutgers, 2013) was born and raised in Boulder and graduated from Ƶ with degrees in both philosophy (summa) and physics (summa). She earned a BPhil in philosophy from Oxford and a PhD in philosophy from Rutgers. Her graduate work was on the laws of nature. After four years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma, she is very happy to be back home in Boulder! She works on metaphysical implications of current physics. She is also the director of the Committee on the History and Philosophy of Science. Most recently, her work is on the way in which special and general relativity inform philosophical notions of time, personal identity, and causation. She has also done research on the retention of undergraduate women in philosophy. She spends her free time hiking and biking with her husband Zak and their three kiddos.
Selected Publications:
- "Persisting Despite the Relativistic Odds" (forthcoming) AJP
- "On the Roles of Function and Selection in Evolving Systems" with Mike Wong, et. al. (2023) PNAS
- "Isolation, Not Locality," with Mike Hicks, (2021), PPR
- “Similarity and Enjoyment Predict Continuation for Women in Philosophy” (2017) Analysis
- “Powerful Properties, Powerless Laws” (2017), in Causal Powers, OUP, ed., Jonathan Jacobs.
- “Fission May Kill You (But Not for the Reasons You Thought)” (2016) PPR
- “The Universe Had One Chance” (2016) Philosophy of Science