Professor of the philosophy of science at the University of Bristol, Samir Okasha specializes in the philosophy of evolutionary biology and also writes on the philosophy of economics as well as epistemology and metaphysics. He is a graduate of Oxford University, where he studied at Balliol College, took first class honors in philosophy and economics, and received a D.Phil. in philosophy in 1998. He began his teaching career as a lecturer in philosophy at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, and held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the National University of Mexico (NUM), a Jacobsen Research Fellowship at the London School of Economics, and a visiting research fellowship at NUM before being appointed a lecturer in philosophy at the University of York in 2000. He came to Bristol as a lecturer in philosophy in 2003 and was named to his present position in 2006. Dr. Okasha also has been a visiting research fellow at the Australian National University. Recipient of a Phillip Leverhulme Prize for research, he presently holds an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant for work on evolution, cooperation, and rationality. He serves as associate editor of the European Journal for the Philosophy of Science and on the editorial boards of Signos Filosoficas, Philosophy and the Theory of Biology, and Biology and Philosophy. The author of more than sixty papers published in scholarly journals or as chapters in volumes of collected works, Dr. Okasha is the co-editor of two forthcoming books, (with Stephan Hartmann and Herman de Regt) Proceedings of the 1st Conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association (Springer) and (with Kenneth Binmore) Evolution and Rationality (Cambridge University Press). His first book, Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction (2002), an explanation of how scientists think and draw conclusions, has been translated into ten languages. His subsequent and highly-praised study, Evolution and Levels of Selection, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2006, is a philosophical examination of the conceptual framework deployed by multi-level selection theory. It won the 2009 Lakatos Award presented by the London School of Economics for outstanding contributions to the philosophy of science.
