Bio
Dr. Kathryn (Katie) Plaisance is a Professor in the Department of Knowledge Integration, with cross-appointments to Philosophy and Psychology, at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. She has several interconnected research programs in philosophy of science, social epistemology, and philosophy of psychology. Her work aims to improve our understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge, foster fruitful interactions between philosophy and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), and help make scientific research and its applications more epistemically and ethically sound.
Dr. Plaisance has several areas of research, including: (1) Socially and scientifically engaged philosophy of science, through which she uses a combination of philosophical and empirical research methods to study engagement between philosophy and other fields. (2) Interactional expertise – a concept that captures the ability to speak the language of a discipline without the corresponding ability to practice. (3) Philosophy of the human behavioral sciences, where she examines concepts, methods, and inferences in human behavioral genetics. Katie’s most recent work seeks to bring these research projects together by considering how philosophers can best acquire and make use of interactional expertise in order to improve the practices and products of science.
Katie completed a BSc in molecular biology and philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000 and, after taking time off to travel, went on to the University of Minnesota where she obtained an MA and PhD in philosophy, specializing in philosophy of science, in 2006. After receiving her PhD, she spent two and a half years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Ethics and Science in Hannover, Germany, before moving to Waterloo for her current position.
Katie is a co-founder and co-director of the International Network of Socially Relevant Philosophy of/in Science and Engineering (SRPoiSE).
Selected Publications
Plaisance, Kathryn S. and Kevin C. Elliott (2021), “A Framework for Broadly Engaged Philosophy of Science,” Philosophy of Science vol 88 (4): 594-615. [Preprint]
Plaisance, Kathryn S., Jay Michaud, and John McLevey (2021), “Pathways of Influence: Understanding the Impact of Philosophy of Science in Scientific Domains,” Synthese, 199: 4865-4896.
Plaisance, Kathryn S. (2020), “The Benefits of Acquiring Interactional Expertise: Why (Some) Philosophers of Science Should Engage Scientific Communities,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 83: 53-62.
Plaisance, Kathryn S., Alexander V. Graham, John McLevey, and Jay Michaud (2019), “Show Me the Numbers: A Quantitative Portrait of the Attitudes, Experiences, and Values of Philosophers of Science Regarding Broadly Engaged Work,” Synthese, 198: 4603-4633.
McLevey, John, Alexander V. Graham, Reid McIlroy-Young, Pierson Brown, and Kathryn S. Plaisance (2018), “Interdisciplinarity and Insularity in the Diffusion of Knowledge: An Analysis of Disciplinary Boundaries Between Philosophy of Science and The Sciences,” Scientometrics, 117: 331-349.
Plaisance, Kathryn S., and Eric B. Kennedy (2014), “A Pluralistic Approach to Interactional Expertise”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 47: 60-68.
Fehr, Carla and Kathryn S. Plaisance (2010), “Socially Relevant Philosophy of Science: An Introduction”, Synthese, vol. 177(3): 301-316.