Sabina Leonelli

Sabina Leonelli is Professor in Philosophy and History of Science at the University of Exeter, where she co-directs the Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences (Egenis), and a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute in London. Her research, currently supported by the European Research Council, UKRI, the Turing and the Australian Research Council, concerns the methods, infrastructures and assumptions involved in the use of big data for discovery, the role of the open science movement within current landscapes of knowledge production and the status and history of organisms as scientific models and data sources. She is particularly interested in archival and classificatory practices in plant biology, and the intersection between the digital and the material in the curation of data and specimens. Leonelli’s publications span the fields of philosophy, social science, biology, history, data science and science policy, and include the award-winning book Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study (2016). She has worked closely with the European Commission on the development and implementation of Open Science policies.