Alison Wylie


Alison Wylie is a Canadian philosopher of archaeology. She is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia and holds a Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of the Social and Historical Sciences.
Wylie specializes in philosophy of science, research ethics, and feminism in the social sciences, particularly archaeology and anthropology.

Early life and education

Wylie was born in 1954 in Swindon, England. She grew up in Canada and obtained her undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Sociology from Mount Allison University in 1976. She then studied at Binghamton University, where she obtained an MA degree in anthropology, and a PhD in philosophy through the shirt-lived Program for History and Philosophy of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Her doctoral dissertation was titled Positivism and the New Archeology, supervised by Rom Harré.

Academic career

Wylie has held faculty appointments at University of Western Ontario, Washington University in St. Louis, Barnhard/Columbia University, the University of Washington and Durham University. She has also held visiting positions at the Australian National University, Reading University, Stanford University, the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, UC Berkeley, New York University, the University of Denver, and Durham University. She is currently a professor in the philosophy department of the University of British Columbia.
Wylie co-chaired the Society for American Archaeology's committee on ethics in archaeology, which drafted the Principles of Archaeological Ethics in use by the SAA. Wylie received a Presidential Recognition Award from the SAA in 1995 for this work.
She was the senior editor of Hypatia, A Journal of Feminist Philosophy between 2008 and 2013) and was named Distinguished Woman Philosopher of the year by the Society for Women in Philosophy in 2013. She served as the president of the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division between 2011 and 2012 and is the current President of the Philosophy of Science Association. In November 2019 Wylie was elected a corresponding fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Wylie gave the 2019 ; the 2018 Distinguished Lecture for the Forum for History of the Human Sciences; the 2017 Dewey Lecture, Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association; the 2016 Katz Distinguished lecture at the University of Washington; the 2013 Springer Lecture, European Philosophy of Science Association; the 2013 Mulvaney Lecture, Australian National University; and the 2008 Patty Jo Watson Distinguished Lecturer, Archaeology Division, American Anthropological Association.

Selected works

Books:
Special issues and Symposia: