Adrian is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology at Exeter.
He was previously a Research Associate at CSER, where he looked at the relationship between the culture of science, and our capacity to understand, predict and mitigate low probability, high impact events. His work was supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation as part of the Managing Extreme Technological Risk project at CSER.
Adrian is primarily interested in how scientists successfully generate knowledge in tricky circumstances: where evidence is thin on the ground, targets are highly complex and obstinate, and our knowledge is limited. This has led him to examine the historical sciences – geology, palaeontology and archaeology – and to argue that the messy, opportunistic (‘methodologically omnivorous’) and disunified nature of these sciences often underwrites their success. His interest in knowledge-production has also led him to think about the natures of, and relationships between, scientific tools such as experiments, models and observations, and their use in sciences whose targets are less amenable to lab work – ecology and climate science, for instance. Adrian received his PhD from Australian National University, and prior to joining CSER has also studied and taught at Victoria University of Wellington, Sydney University, the University of Calgary, and IRH in Bucharest. He is a founder of, and regular contributor to, Extinct, the philosophy of paleontology blog.
Related research areas
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Global catastrophic and existential risks communication scale
Peer-reviewed paper by Alexey Turchin, David Denkenberger
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Measuring changes in urban functional capacity for climate resilience: Perspectives from Korea
Peer-reviewed paper by Donghyun Kim, Seul-Ki Song
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Interventions that may prevent or mollify supervolcanic eruptions
Peer-reviewed paper by David Denkenberger, Robert W Blair Jr
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Governing Boring Apocalypses: A new typology of existential vulnerabilities and exposures for existential risk research
Peer-reviewed paper by Hin-Yan Liu, Kristian Cedervall Lauta, Matthijs Michiel Maas
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Preserving the norm against chemical weapons: A civil society initiative for the 2018 4th review conference of the chemical weapons convention
Peer-reviewed paper by Michael Crowley, Lijun Shang, Malcolm Dando
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Accompanying technology development in the Human Brain Project: From foresight to ethics management
Peer-reviewed paper by Christine Aicardi, B. Tyr Fothergill, Stephen Rainey, Bernd Carsten Stahl, Emma Harris
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In defence of story-telling
Peer-reviewed paper by Adrian Currie, Kim Sterelny
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Beyond Brain Size: Uncovering the Neural Correlates of Behavioral and Cognitive Specialization
Peer-reviewed paper by Corina J. Logan, Shahar Avin, Neeltje Boogert, Andrew Buskell, Fiona R. Cross, Adrian Currie, Sarah Jelbert, Dieter Lukas, Rafael Mares, Ana F. Navarrete, Shuichi Shigeno, Stephen H. Montgomery
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Ingredients for Understanding Brain and Behavioral Evolution: Ecology, Phylogeny, and Mechanism
Peer-reviewed paper by Stephen H. Montgomery, Adrian Currie, Dieter Lukas, Neeltje Boogert, Andrew Buskell, Fiona R. Cross, Sarah Jelbert, Shahar Avin, Rafael Mares, Ana F. Navarrete, Shuichi Shigeno, Corina J. Logan
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Existential risk due to ecosystem collapse: Nature strikes back
Peer-reviewed paper by Peter Kareiva, Valerie Carranza