[photo description: Jingyi, with mid-length black hair and round thin metal-frame glasses, sits in a tea shop and smiles into the camera. A pot of tea is placed in front of her.]
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I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. I primarily work on epistemology (feminist, social, and formal) and philosophy of physics. I work in both areas separately, but increasingly I have been thinking about their intersection (check out the Feminist Philosophy of Physics Workshop). I also have interests in general philosophy of science, feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, Asian diasporic philosophy, and mathematical physics.
My work focuses on clarifying the structures of our social and physical worlds. As a scientifically-informed philosopher, I do so in two ways. First, I employ network models to address questions such as: How do social identities and social injustice impact knowledge production in a group? Does diversity improve group learning? How do we promote such diversity? This work is at the intersection of social epistemology, network modeling, and the philosophy of race and gender. Second, I use geometric and topological methods to study foundational questions in physics, especially in spacetime theories and statistical mechanics. This work is in the philosophy and foundations of physics. In both areas, I use mathematical tools to think about philosophically interesting questions, and philosophically reflect on the applicability of models that purport to represent or explain reality. Read more about my research here. I'm passionate about community building and structurally shifting academia into a more welcoming space for minoritized populations. I served on the Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) leadership team from 2018-2021, including co-directing it in 2020-21. I designed the LPS climate committee in 2020 and chaired it in 2021-22. I also serve on the Underrepresented Philosophy of Science Scholars (UPSS) Committee at the Philosophy of Science Association. I am building a community of feminist philosophers of physics. Drop me an email if you would like to learn more. Read more about my service work here. In teaching, I encourage inclusive, skill-based, and individually-centered learning. In Summer 2022, I proposed, designed, and successfully taught a new course on Asian American Philosophy at UC Irvine. I am quite proud of how it turned out. Since Autumn 2023, I regularly teach Philosophy of Gender and Race and run a research group on social epistemology at the LSE. In Summer 2024, I taught a lecture stream on Computational Models of Diversity and Inequity at the MCMP summer school. It was so much fun! You can read more about my teaching here. I received my Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science (LPS) and my M.A. in Social Science from the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, both at UC Irvine. Before Irvine, I spent a year as an M.A. student at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. Before that, I received my B.A. from Middlebury College, double majoring in philosophy and mathematics. Here is my CV, and here is my Google Scholar profile. My Erdős number is 3. (Paul Erdős—>James Milne Anderson—>Stephen D. Abbott—>me.) My name (Jingyi Wu) is pronounced roughly as jing-yee woo. I go by Jingyi. I use she/her/hers pronouns. My email address is [email protected]. Here is a guide on how to write an email to me. I like good food, urban exploring, crafting (knitting, crocheting, woodworking, LEGO), walking, and aerial sports (esp. pole). I want to get into foraging and birding. I get easily distracted by shiny and nerdy things (how else do you think I work on so many things?!). I like capybaras, trains, funiculars, cable cars, aerial tramways, and boats. I do not like buses nor rigid chairs. |
News!
October 2023 My paper "Between a Stone and a Hausdorff Space," with James Owen Weatherall, is forthcoming in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. In this paper, we show that the duality between general relativity and Einstein algebras breaks down when we consider not-necessarily-Hausdorff manifolds, and explore how this result bears on a number of questions in philosophy of physics, including the substantivalism/relationalism, theoretical equivalence, and the modal structures of science. You can read the paper here.
July 2023 My paper "Better than Best: Epistemic Landscapes and Diversity of Practice in Science" is forthcoming in Philosophy of Science. In this paper, I ask, should group members always follow the best available solution if they care about their epistemic success? I use simulation models to show that, surprisingly, a group of agents who individually randomly follow a better available solution than their own can outperform a group of agents who individually always follow the best available solution. I draw implications in the feminist philosophy of science and social epistemology. You can read the paper here.
June 2023 I received the 2023 UCI School of Social Sciences Outstanding Scholarship award. You can read an interview about my work and my intellectual journey here.
February 2023 I wrote a public-facing piece, "Modeling Injustice in Epistemic Networks," introducing my dissertation work. It was published as part of a symposium series on the Brains Blog, with commentary from Kevin Zollman. You can read the piece here.
February 2023 A white paper I co-authored as part of the massive international inter-disciplinary Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Project is now published in Galaxies. The title is "The Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration: History, Philosophy, and Culture." You can read it here (open access).
October 2023 My paper "Between a Stone and a Hausdorff Space," with James Owen Weatherall, is forthcoming in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. In this paper, we show that the duality between general relativity and Einstein algebras breaks down when we consider not-necessarily-Hausdorff manifolds, and explore how this result bears on a number of questions in philosophy of physics, including the substantivalism/relationalism, theoretical equivalence, and the modal structures of science. You can read the paper here.
July 2023 My paper "Better than Best: Epistemic Landscapes and Diversity of Practice in Science" is forthcoming in Philosophy of Science. In this paper, I ask, should group members always follow the best available solution if they care about their epistemic success? I use simulation models to show that, surprisingly, a group of agents who individually randomly follow a better available solution than their own can outperform a group of agents who individually always follow the best available solution. I draw implications in the feminist philosophy of science and social epistemology. You can read the paper here.
June 2023 I received the 2023 UCI School of Social Sciences Outstanding Scholarship award. You can read an interview about my work and my intellectual journey here.
February 2023 I wrote a public-facing piece, "Modeling Injustice in Epistemic Networks," introducing my dissertation work. It was published as part of a symposium series on the Brains Blog, with commentary from Kevin Zollman. You can read the piece here.
February 2023 A white paper I co-authored as part of the massive international inter-disciplinary Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Project is now published in Galaxies. The title is "The Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration: History, Philosophy, and Culture." You can read it here (open access).