Professor Rachell Powell Appointed Director of the BU Center for Philosophy and History of Science
The Department would like to wish warm congratulations to Professor Rachell Powell, who has been appointed as the next Director of the BU Center for Philosophy and the History of Science, effective July 2023.
Professor Powell works broadly at the intersection of evolutionary science and ethics. With advanced degrees in Philosophy (PhD), Law (JD), and Biology (MS), she has pursued remarkably interdisciplinary research that spans the philosophy of biology, medicine, bioethics, and political philosophy. She has been awarded prestigious fellowships, including from the National Humanities Center, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Vienna, and the Berlin School of Mind and Brain at Humboldt University. She has been a principal investigator on grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation, and she is currently serving as an associate editor of the journal Philosophy & Technology. Her most recent monographs include Contingency and Convergence: Toward a Cosmic Biology of Body and Mind, published by MIT Press in 2020, and The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory, published by Oxford University Press in 2018 (co-written with Allen Buchanan).
Professor Powell adds this credit to her many other achievements in the field, as well as her being a highly esteemed faculty member here in the Department. She will be taking over for Professor Alisa Bokulich, a fellow faculty member in the BU Philosophy Department, who has served as CPHS Director since 2010.
Congratulations, Professor!