[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 social epistemology and philosophy of physics. I also have interests in general philosophy of science, feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, Asian/American 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 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. Read more about my service work here. I proposed, designed, and successfully taught a brand-new class on Asian American Philosophy at UC Irvine in Summer 2022. I am quite proud of how it turned out. You can read more about the class and other teaching-related things 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 coming to 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. My email address is Jingyi.Wu@lse.ac.uk. I use she/her/hers pronouns. |
News!
July-August 2023 My paper "Better than Best: Epistemic Landscapes and Diversity of Practice in Science" is now 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.
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).
July-August 2023 My paper "Better than Best: Epistemic Landscapes and Diversity of Practice in Science" is now 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.
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).
