Siska De Baerdemaeker received her PhD in history and philosophy of science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2020. Prior to this, she completed an MA in philosophy and a BSc in physics at KU Leuven. She joined Stockholm University as a postdoc, before leading the RJ-funded project Discovering Dark Matter: Extending Philosophy of Experiment to Dark Matter Research.

De Baerdemaeker works primarily in the history and philosophy of cosmology and astrophysics. In philosophy of dark matter, she focuses on the epistemic foundations of empirical research into a difficult-to-access target. This work has appeared in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Science. More generally, her Cambridge Elements volume Philosophy of Cosmology and Astrophysics was published in 2025, and she co-edited the first edited collection of papers in the philosophy of astrophysics in 2023. Finally, De Baerdemaeker has an ongoing research project on the history of early twentieth-century relativistic cosmology.

As a Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, De Baerdemaeker will investigate how scientists should collectively decide what future research to pursue, especially in the context of Big Science. Many breakthroughs in cosmology and astrophysics have been achieved through large-scale collaborations using novel instruments that can cost billions. Given limited resources, decisions about which empirical research to pursue can have a lasting impact on science. De Baerdemaeker will investigate historical examples of such collective decision-making in US astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology, drawing philosophical lessons about collective decision-making in science and the pursuitworthiness of experiments. This project has also received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 101219395).

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2026-27.