About Rebecca
I am a philosopher and historian of measurement in science and medicine, focusing on clinical measuring practices and methodology. Currently, I am based in Durham, England as a Bridging Fellow in Medical Humanities hosted by the Department of Philosophy at Durham University and the Measurement Lab within the Institute for Medical Humanities and Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities.
My research prods at the assumptions we make about measurement done well—is it always the case that “standardized” is better? If our notion of “validation” or “precision” requires many trials, how do we measure well if we only have “one shot,” as when measuring something that is individual to a single patient? My philosophical work on measurement begins by engaging with historical cases that disturb our most cherished notions of “accuracy” and “reliability”—when standardization fails, but somehow we measure anyway. I show what we can learn about measurement from the historical cases that, theoretically, shouldn’t exist. To do this work, my attention is drawn to scientists’ measuring practices and the materials that enable them. I show how the physical and temporal act of measuring is intimately tied up in the models, notation, and institutions that emerge to shape (and be shaped around) these practices. Because measurement is central to so many areas of science and medicine, my work tends to attract some brilliant collaborators I am proud to work with, from both humanities and human sciences.
Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Research Group on Practices of Validation in the Biomedical Sciences at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. In 2023, I received my doctorate from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine at Indiana University - Bloomington. During my doctorate, I was the 2022-2023 Doan Dissertation Fellow at the Science History Institute, as well as the 2021-2022 John C. Slater Predoctoral Fellow in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. My undergraduate degrees are in mathematics and creative writing, interests which still influence the way I communicate my research and teach. My graduate Minor is in Statistics, which comes in handy when I need to make sense of data (or make sense into data) and help students do the same.
Find out more about my research on non-standard clinical measuring practices, my current and past collaborations, or download my CV.
Contact me: rebeccajackson [at] alumni [dot] iu [dot] edu.