Milena Ivanova
BSc (Athens), MA (Athens), PhD (Bristol)
College roles
Assistant Tutor (Undergraduates & Postgraduates)
Mentor
Special Supervisor in Natural Sciences (History & Philosophy of Science)
Biography
Dr Milena Ivanova is a philosopher of science specialising in the aesthetics of science, scientific creativity and AI assisted discovery. She is a Senior Teaching Associate at the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education and a Teaching Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. She completed her BSc and MA in History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Athens and her PhD in Philosophy at the University of Bristol. As a PhD student, Dr Milena Ivanova was awarded a fellowship from the British Society for Philosophy of Science as well as Royal Institute for Philosophy Jacobsen Fellowship. Before coming to Cambridge, Dr Ivanova lectured in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney and held a postdoctoral fellowship at LMU Munich.
Research Interests
Dr Ivanova investigates the role of aesthetic values in science, paying particular attention to how aesthetic values enter in the construction, evaluation and reception of experiments. She also researches the role of creativity in scientific discovery, whether AI can enhance scientific creativity, and implications from the automation of scientific labor. Dr Ivanova is the author of Duhem and Holism, published with Cambridge University Press, which explores how scientists learn from experiment. She has also co-edited The Aesthetics of Science: Beauty, Imagination and Understanding, published in 2020, and The Aesthetics of Scientific Experiments, published in 2023, by Routledge. She often writes for popular audiences and her AEON Magazine piece 'The Beautiful Experiment' won the American Philosophical Association's 2022 Public Philosophy Op-Ed prize.