You can contact me by email at thresher@stanford.edu

ANN C THRESHER                                        thresher@stanford.edu

I'm a post-doc at Stanford University in the McCoy Family Center for Ethics working with the new School for Sustainability. I work on a range of topics including synthetic biology, invasive species, science policy, and emerging environmental technologies. Much of my work engages with themes of minimising risk while maximising benefits, and where and how to deploy new solutions to the environmental crisis.

More broadly I am also a philosopher of science, where I work on the ethical obligations of scientists and why we should trust science. My new co-authored book 'the Tangle of Science; Reliability Beyond Method, Rigour, and Objectivity' was published in 2023. It broadly argues that we need to set aside our focus on truth in science and instead turn to the structures that underpin any given product of science to see why it gives us useful results.

I am also a member of the History, Philosophy and Culture working group for the next generation Event Horizon Telescope where I lead a focus group working on the ethical aspects of telescope siting, including environmental and social impacts. This work is informed by my Physics degree, and I also work in the philosophy of physics where I have written on space-time topology and the philosophy of time. More information on all of these topics can be found on my research page.

At Stanford I am working to develop an environmental ethics and values course for the new Stanford Doerr School for Sustainability, as well as integrate values-thinking more broadly into the new school. I have taught environmental ethics and technology ethics classes, and helped teach a planetary stewardship intensive course this summer. Some of my previous syllabuses can be found on my teaching page.

As well as founding the queer phenomenology reading groups at Stanford and UCSD, I have acted as  the founding chair of the UCSD department climate committee, work as a grant reviewer for the Stanford Ethics in Society Review Board, given talks at San Diego Comic-Con, and previously worked for the Royal  London Mathematical society where I organised conferences, museum exhibitions, artist in residence projects, documentaries, and collaborations with the London Science Museum, the Institute for Physics, and the Royal Astronomical Society. More about my CV can be found here.

                 Photo credit: Alex Gillaspy

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