| Cecelia Watson | |||||||||
| Birth Place: | United States | ||||||||
| Discipline: | History and philosophy of science | ||||||||
| Scholar in Residence at Bard College | |||||||||
| Education: | University of Chicago (Ph.D., M.A.); St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe) (B.A.) | ||||||||
| Doctoral Advisor: | Robert J. Richards | ||||||||
| Academic Advisors: | Lorraine Daston | ||||||||
| Awards: | American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow | ||||||||
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Cecelia Watson is an American author, and a historian and philosopher of science.[1]
Watson attended St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe), earning a B.A. in Liberal Arts.[2] She then did graduate work at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Robert J. Richards and Lorraine Daston.[3] She earned an M.A. in Philosophy and a Ph.D. in Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science.[4]
From 2011 to 2013, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and a scientific advisor to Haus der Kulturen der Welt, working on a joint project on the Anthropocene hypothesis.[5] [4] She then was awarded an American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellowship, which she undertook at Yale University from 2013 to 2015 with a joint appointment in the Department of Philosophy and the Program in the Humanities.[6]
She is currently Scholar in Residence at Bard College, with no departmental affiliation listed.[7] She has stated that she considers her academic work equally informed by the disciplines of history and of philosophy and that she rejects traditional disciplinary boundaries and specializations.[8]
Watson has written for The New York Times,[9] NBC,[10] The Paris Review,[11] LitHub,[12] and The Millions.[13] Her first book, Semicolon: The Past, Present and Future of a Misunderstood Mark was published in July 2019 by HarperCollins in the United States.[14] The book argued in favor of the use of semicolons, and against traditional grammar rules.[15]
A version of the book for British readers was published in the United Kingdom by 4th Estate with the title Semicolon: How a Misunderstood Punctuation Mark Can Improve Your Writing, Enrich Your Reading and Even Change Your Life.[16]
In February 2022, Publishers Weekly announced that Watson's second book, covering the world of watch collecting and the watch industry, had been acquired by Riverhead Books.[17]