Alison Wylie papers (Ms.2017.020)

Biographical/Historical note

As an undergraduate in Philosophy at Mt. Allison University, Alison Wylie discovered that philosophical issues were being hotly debated in archaeology. She worked on historic sites for Parks Canada in the 1970s and early 1980s at a time when the New Archaeologists – vocal advocates of scientific practice – were explicitly drawing inspiration from positivist models of explanation and confirmation. She also worked in the Program for the History and Philosophy of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (HPSBS) offered by the Philosophy Department at the State University of Binghamton where she studied with a group of archaeologists in the Binghamton Anthropology Department.

Wylie held postdoctoral fellowships for the first four years after she completed her Ph.D in philosophy at the State University of New York at Binghamton. In 1985 she joined the Philosophy Department at the University of Western Ontario (now Western University) where she taught for thirteen years. In 1998 she moved to the United States where she has held positions at Washington University in St. Louis, Barnard College/Columbia University in New York, the University of Washington in Seattle from 2005-2016, and currently at the University of British Columbia. Wylie has also spent time at Durham University in the U.K. where she worked with the Centers for Ethics of Cultural Heritage and Humanities Engaging Science and Society. Wylie’s research interests include feminist philosophy, the philosophy of science, and women and gender studies in the academy

Wylie has held a number of research and visiting appointments. Most recently she spent a month at Australian National University where she was a Visiting Fellow in the School of Philosophy (2014), a term at the Durham Institute for Advanced Study during the year when their focal theme was ‘Time’ (2012), six months at Reading University as a Leverhulme Visiting Professor (2010), and a year at as a Senior Research Fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford University (2005-2006).