My research explores four main areas. Though some projects are confined to a single domain, much of my work stretches across two or more of these topics:
- History of economics and political economy
- The place of expertise in democratic political life
- Virtue ethics and virtue epistemology in science
- Historiography, especially historical epistemology and practice theory
Current Major Projects
Economic Statistics and the Challenge of Democratic Control — Courtesy of a grant from the National Science Foundation, I’m working on a new book focused on a core question: how can official statistics be subject to democratic oversight and control while retaining their non-partisan character and serving as a bulwark against the abuse of political power?
Developing Virtues in the Practice of Science — I’m part of a multi-disciplinary team that will be examining the dispositions (cognitive, behavioral, and emotional) that are correlated with laboratory research in biology. Funded by a three-year, $3.1 million grant from the Templeton Religion Trust, this project brings together scholars from theology, psychology, anthropology, and the history & philosophy of science. A brief overview can be found here.
Home & Market: Family Economics, 1910 – 1960 — I’m (slowly) working on a series of essays about the field of “family economics,” a hybrid area of study primarily undertaken by female economists that bridged home economics and economics in the first half of the twentieth century.
In addition to these projects, I’m working on a number of essays on specific topics, such as the early history of econometrics, the French tradition of historical epistemology, and the place of practice theory in the historiography of science.
BLS tabulating pool, c. 1935. Source: Goldberg and Moye, The First Hundred Years of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Washington, 1985).