Rate My Professor Anjan Chakravartty

Anjan Chakravartty is the Appignani Foundation Chair and Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Miami. His research centers on central issues in the philosophy of science, metaphysics, and epistemology, including debates about scientific realism—such as entity and structural realism—and antirealism, particularly empiricism. He also explores topics in the philosophy of physics and biology, as well as the nature of dispositions, causation, and laws of nature.

Chakravartty earned a BSc Honours in Biophysics (1991) and an MA in Philosophy (1995) from the University of Toronto, followed by an MPhil (1997) and PhD (2001) in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge. His academic career includes positions at the University of Leeds (Teaching Fellow, 1999-2000), King’s College, Cambridge (Junior Research Fellow, 2000-2002), University of Toronto (Assistant Professor 2002-2007, Associate Professor 2007-2011, Director of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology 2008-2011), University of Notre Dame (Professor 2011-2018, Director of the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values 2014-2018), and since 2018 at the University of Miami.

Among his honors are election to the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences (2017), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2016-2017), and the Canadian Philosophical Association Biennial Book Prize (2009) for A Metaphysics for Scientific Realism: Knowing the Unobservable. Other awards include the Values-Driven Leadership Award (2016) and Dean’s Excellence Awards from the University of Toronto (2008, 2010). Chakravartty has held visiting fellowships at the Universities of Pittsburgh, Sydney, Edinburgh, and the Institute Vienna Circle.

His influential publications include the books Scientific Ontology: Integrating Naturalized Metaphysics and Voluntarist Epistemology (2017) and A Metaphysics for Scientific Realism: Knowing the Unobservable (2007), the latter cited over 1,000 times. Seminal papers such as “Semirealism” (1998) and “The Structuralist Conception of Objects” (2003) have shaped debates in the field. As Editor-in-Chief of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (2012-2018) and series editor for Philosophical Outsiders (Oxford University Press, 2020-present), he has advanced philosophical discourse.