Emily Sullivan

  • Department of Philosophy
  • Edinburgh Futures Institute
  • Center of Technomoral Futures

Contact details

Biography

Background

Dr. Emily Sullivan is a senior lecturer in the University of Edinburgh’s Department of Philosophy and serves as a Co-Director of the Centre for Technomoral Futures in the Edinburgh Futures Institute . Emily joined the university in 2025 following academic appointments in the Netherlands at Utrecht University and Eindhoven University of Technology. She is an associate editor for The British Journal of Philosophy of Science and in 2025 she was awarded the Herbert A. Simon Award from the International Association of Computing and Philosophy.

Research summary

Philosophy of science, Epistemology, Philosophy of AI and Machine Learning, Ethics of AI 

Current research interests

Emily’s research explores the ways that AI technology mediates knowledge, understanding, and our practice of giving and receiving explanations. Her work focuses on the way that AI changes how we do science and use scientific models in society, which calls us to rethink existing philosophical frameworks surrounding the nature of explanation, idealization, and scientific understanding. At the same time, she considers how normative issues in ethics and epistemology shape the answers to these questions. Emily’s work has been published in philosophy journals, such as the British Journal for Philosophy of Science, Australisain Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, and more. Her work has also been published in interdisciplinary computing conferences, such as the ACM Conference Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) and the AAAI/ ACM Conference AI, Ethics and Society (AIES). She is currently the PI on an ERC Starting Grant (2025-2030) that conceptualizes and evaluates machine learning models across science and society as a type of toy model. In this project, she bridges epistemic and ethical issues in simple computational models with complex modern day machine learning models.

Current project grants

ERC Starting Grant (2025-2030) Machine learning models in science and society: A dangerous toy? (TOY)

Past project grants

Dutch Research Council: Veni Grant (2020-2024): Explain Yourself! The scope of understanding and explanation from machine learning models

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