People & perspectives
Meet the researchers and scholars in the group.
Group Leader · Professor of Philosophy
Patricia Palacios is the group leader and a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Salzburg. She works on emergence, reduction, idealizations in science, phase transitions, and the application of the physics of statistical mechanics to other disciplines, including biological sciences.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Jessica’s research explores the use of analogical inference and template transfer in scientific practice. Her current research focuses on developing a pluralistic, pragmatic normative account of analogical inference, arguing that while relevant similarity cannot be captured by formal schema, normativity can be preserved through context-sensitive tools that guide inference under uncertainty. She also researches how cognitive biases present in scientific reasoning.
Postdoctoral Fellow
My research focuses on the philosophy of physics and the general philosophy of science. I am particularly absorbed by how scientific theories are adapted and qualified when applied beyond their original domain, and by the ways in which different theories collaborate to account for complex phenomena. Currently, my work centres on the foundations of thermal physics - including statistical mechanics and quantum thermodynamics - as well as the thermodynamics of information. Additionally, I explore the foundations of spacetime theories, the history of scientific concepts, and the relationship between agency and physics.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Rawad El Skaf is a philosopher of science working at the science–society–policy interface, with a focus on climate mitigation scenarios and the IPCC’s mandate to be policy-relevant yet policy-neutral. Drawing on feminist, decolonial, and Marxist theory, he critiques value-deference and argues for an explicitly partisan science, especially when societal stakes are high. He is currently a Humboldt Experienced Fellow at Leibniz University Hannover and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the FWF Cluster of Excellence “Knowledge in Crisis” at the University of Salzburg.
PhD Student
My name is Helen Mocanu. I am primarily interested in imprecise probabilities and their potential relationship to social epistemology. I am also interested in certain topics in decision theory, like proper scoring rules and modeling uncertainty and ambiguity.
Research Assistant · MA Student
Jiang Zhang is interested in the intersection of philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, and mathematical foundations. His research focuses on structure, invariance, emergence, and the architecture of theories, especially how mathematical and physical structures are preserved, transformed, or made intelligible across different levels and frameworks. He brings a mixed academic background in computer science, mathematics, and philosophy, developed through his studies at the National University of Singapore. He is especially interested in bringing formal tools to bear on philosophical questions about mathematics and physics.
MA Student
I am a philosophy and art student in Salzburg, currently working and interested in topics on philosophy of science, logic, and visual arts. I have focused on the concepts of post-colonialism and anti-colonialism, through which I explore the intersections of political, ethical, and philosophical issues. My research in philosophy of science has moved around the debate of scientific objectivity and the use of values in science, including both epistemic and ethical concerns. Besides working on research and projects in a context of analytic philosophy, I also explore such concepts through artistic interdisciplinary media.
Visiting Researcher · PhD Candidate
I am a PhD candidate in philosophy of science at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, supervised by Laura Nuño de la Rosa and María Cerezo. My doctoral research is funded by an FPI grant within the BioKoinos group’s project Metaphysics of Biology: Processes and Dispositions. I am currently a visiting researcher in the Complexity Group at the University of Salzburg, hosted by Patricia Palacios.
My research focuses on emergence, and in particular on how its different varieties (synchronic and diachronic, weak and strong, ontological and epistemological) relate to one another. A central question in my work concerns the limits of synchronic emergence. I argue that synchronic emergence, taken on its own, can only ever be weak, and that genuinely novel properties require a diachronic account of how entities are transformed as they come together. During my stay in Salzburg, I am working on few-many emergence, the novel behaviour displayed by systems with very many components, such as the paramagnetic–ferromagnetic transition in magnetic materials, where the magnetic susceptibility diverges at the critical point. My aim is to determine whether few-many emergence is best understood as a form of synchronic emergence, a form of diachronic emergence, or something else altogether.