Katherine Hawley

Katherine Jane Hawley (1971–2021 ) was a British philosopher specialising in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of physics. Hawley was a professor of philosophy at the University of St Andrews. She was the author of How Things Persist (OUP 2002), Trust: a Very Short Introduction (OUP 2012), and How To Be Trustworthy (OUP 2020). Hawley was elected a Fellow of Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2016, elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2020, and she was the recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize and a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2014–16).

Life and career Hawley was born in Stoke-on-Trent, England. She did her undergraduate degree (BA) in physics and philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford (1989–92) and lived in France for a short while afterwards. She then went on to receive her MPhil (1993–94) and PhD (1994–97) in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Peter Lipton. She most recently lived in Anstruther in Fife with her husband Jon Hesk, Reader in the Classics Department of St. Andrews University, with whom she had two children. She served as an editorial chair of The Philosophical Quarterly (2005–10), in addition to being a deputy (1999–2001) and an associate editor (2011–2012) of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. According to Dyke, In How To Be Trustworthy (2020), Hawley explored what it is to be trustworthy or untrustworthy, articulating a notion of 'trustworthiness' as avoiding unfulfilled commitments.

Selected works

Authored books How To Be Trustworthy, Oxford University Press (2020) (176 pp.) Trust: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press (2012) (121 pp.) How Things Persist, Oxford University Press (2001) (xi + 221 pp.)

Co-edited books The Admissible Contents of Perception, edited with Fiona Macpherson, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell (2011). Re-issue of Philosophical Quarterly special issue 59.236, with a new introduction sole-authored by FM. Philosophy of Science Today, edited with Peter Clark, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2003). Re-issue of British Journal of Philosophy of Science special anniversary issue.

Professional offices and service Head of School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies, University of St Andrews 2009–2014. Former committee member of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, the Analysis committee, and the British Philosophical Association; committee member for the Mind Association (2013-current).

Grants and prizes Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, 2014–16 (£94,445). Local Principal Investigator for Marie Curie Initial Training Network, 2009–13 (value to St Andrews approx. £153,000). AHRB Research Leave award, 2004 (£13,153). Philip Leverhulme Prize, 2003 (Research prize of £50,000) British Academy Joint Activities grant, 2003–5 (£4,500 to fund collaboration with philosophers at Western Washington University).