(c) privat
I am a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy II at Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB), Germany, and I am also currently a visiting professor at Ghent University. My research topics include epistemic and methodological aspects of scientific inquiry, with a special emphasis on the context of scientific diversity. While my PhD research focused on the assessment of pursuit worthiness of scientific theories, during my post-doctoral research I have tackled issues concerning methodological and epistemic aspects of scientific disagreements, the impact of inconsistencies on the assessment of scientific theories, and formal modelling of scientific inquiry.
I graduated Philosophy at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia, and subsequently worked as a teaching assistant at the same department. Upon receiving a BOF (Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds) grant by Ghent University, Belgium for students from developing countries, I continued my postgraduate education at Ghent University, where I completed the Postgraduate Studies in Logic, History and Philosophy of Science. Subsequently, I obtained a BOF grant for PhD studies at Ghent University as well, completing them with the dissertation: „Epistemic Evaluation in the Context of Pursuit and in the Argumentative Approach to Methodology“. I was then employed as a BOF post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science at Ghent University, and subsequently as a post-doctoral researcher at the Ruhr-University Bochum, where I am currently working at the Institute for Philosophy II.
My main areas of interest are philosophy of science, methodology of science, social epistemology, formal modelling of scientific inquiry, argumentation, and science policy. My research lies at the intersection of integrated history and philosophy of science, social epistemology, and formal approaches to scientific inquiry. On the one hand, I am interested in normative aspects of scientific inquiry, such as the question of warranted assessments of scientific theories. On the other hand, my work on these questions is essentially informed by historical case studies. More recently, I have investigated formal models of scientific inquiry (especially, agent-based models) and their fruitfulness in addressing certain methodological and socio-epistemological issues.
Throughout my research I have always strived to engage in collaborations with colleagues. In contrast to the old image of a (white male) philosopher writing in isolation from society and as a sole author of his manuscripts, my academic experience at Ghent University and Ruhr-University Bochum has taught me that collaborating with others is often the most fruitful method of conducting philosophical research. My most recent collaborative project, which is not only multi-authored but also interdisciplinary concerns an argumentative approach to agent-based modelling of scientific inquiry. Members of this team, formed as a part of the Research Group for Non-Monotonic Logic and Formal Argumentation (http://homepages.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/defeasible-reasoning/), have a background in philosophy of science, social epistemology, logic, argumentation theory, artificial intelligence and economics. The project aims at developing a highly modular agent-based model, fruitful for facilitating our understanding and explanation of various methodological and socio-epistemological aspects of scientific inquiry.
I am also a member of the steering committee of the research network „Logical and Methodological Analysis of Scientific Reasoning Processes“ (http://www.lmasrp.ugent.be/).
Website: https://rub.academia.edu/DunjaSeselja. Contact: Dunja Šešelja, post-doctoral researcher, Institute for Philosophy II, Ruhr-University Bochum.
