Cameron Dashwood

I am a physicist-turned-philosopher, with a PhD and post-doctoral experience in experimental condensed matter physics (both from UCL). My former research involved going to large particle accelerators (synchrotrons) and firing intense beams of x-rays at crystalline materials to uncover the collective quantum behaviour of the electrons inside them. I found myself repeatedly confronted by philosophical questions in the course of this research, which I started to explore during an MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge last year.

I am now returning to Cambridge for a PhD funded jointly by the AHRC DTP and Trinity Hall. I will be working with Neil Dewar (Faculty of Philosophy) and Hasok Chang (HPS) to apply insights from my experience in the lab to the long-running debate on scientific realism. More specifically, I hope to challenge and refine the popular position dubbed "structural realism" by considering whether it provides adequate ontological machinery to faithfully describe experimental practice.