Appointments to the British Academy

Two University of St Andrews Professors have been elected Fellows of the British Academy.

Professor Andrew Whiten from the School of Psychology and Professor John Broome from the School of Philosophical and Anthropological Studies are two of 35 Fellows to be elected throughout the UK.

Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the national academy for the humanities and the social sciences, the counterpart of the Royal Society which covers the natural sciences. It is an independent learned society which has responsibility by Royal Charter for promoting research and scholarship in all branches of humane and social studies, from philosophy, language, literature and history to economics, law, sociology, geography and politics.

Professor Andrew Whiten became Professor of Evolutionary and Developmental Psychology at St Andrews in 1997, a position that reflects his abiding interest in understanding where our minds come from. It also reflects his conviction that scientific progress often comes from combining the strengths and discoveries of a broad range of disciplines. Originally trained in biology and ethology, he made the transition to psychology through an ESRC Conversion Fellowship at Oxford, before becoming Lecturer in Psychology at St Andrews in 1975 and Reader in 1991. In the 1990s he was Visiting Professor at Zurich and held the first F M Bird Professorship at Emory University. He has gained an international reputation for his work on the evolution and development of our social intelligence, researching topics as diverse as cooperation, deception and the transmission of culture in monkeys, apes and humans, particularly children. Through a Leverhulme Personal Fellowship in 1997 and currently with the support of a prestigious British Academy Research Readership, he is investigating the origins of our everyday psychology in infancy and in the life of apes.

Meanwhile, Professor John Broome joined the University as Professor of Philosophy in 1996. His previous appointments had been in economics, first at London University, and then at the University of Bristol. His book Weighing Goods (1991) uses formal techniques from economics within ethical theory. The sequel Weighing Lives, now in preparation, applies similar methods to try and judge the value of human life. It has practical implications for rationing in medicine, for decisions about the environment, and for other areas where lives are at stake. Broome is now pursuing a new line of philosophical reasearch on the nature of rationality. This summer he leaves St Andrews to take up the post of White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford.

ENDS

Issued by Beattie Media on behalf of the University of St Andrews For more information please contact Claire Grainger on 01334 462530, 07730 415 015 or email [email protected] Ref: britishacademy/standrews/chg/5july2000