Biography
Receiving her doctorate in June 2015, Andrea is currently a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow at DePauw University. Her research focuses on the philosophy of science, particularly the social dimension of knowledge creation. In her dissertation, Analogical Reasoning and Scientific Practice: The Problem of Ingrained Analogy, Andrea presents a potential problem that arises when scientific communities indiscriminately rely on analogies as part of their practice. Dead metaphors pose an epistemic threat to science. When the analogies underwriting such metaphors are taken for granted, it affects the intepretation as well as the relevancy of data. To mitigate the problem of an ingrained analogy, Andrea offers a set of strategies for scientific communities. These strategies promote a robust critique of a community's metaphors and decrease the likelihood of an analogy becoming ingrained.
A member of the wind clan of the Muskogee Nation of Oklahoma, Andrea is also interested in topics relevant to Indian Country, such as identity, sovereignty, and mixed-race contributions to knowledge production. She is the co-editor of the American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Indigenous Philosophies.