Heather Demarest

Heather Demarest (PhD, Rutgers, 2013) was born and raised in Boulder. She graduated from the University of Colorado with degrees in philosophy (summa) and physics (summa), earned a BPhil in philosophy from Oxford, and completed her PhD in philosophy from Rutgers. Her graduate work focused on laws of nature and chance. After four years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma, she returned to Boulder, where she is now an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Committee on the History and Philosophy of Science. 

Her research is on the metaphysical implications of contemporary physics, particularly for laws of nature, chance, time, and personal identity. Her recent work is on the connection between entropy, statistical mechanics and the emergence of complex systems. She is also working on questions about identity and consciousness in large language models. In addition, she has conducted research on the participation and retention of undergraduate women in philosophy. 

• “Three Ontological Options for the Laws of the Best System,” with Isaac Wilhelm (2026) Phil Imprint
• "Persisting Despite the Relativistic Odds” (2025) AJP
• “How (Not) to Be a Pragmatic Humean” (2025) Synthese
• "On the Roles of Function and Selection in Evolving Systems" with Mike Wong, et. al. (2023) PNAS
• "Isolation, Not Locality," with Mike Hicks, (2021), PPR
• “Similarity and Enjoyment Predict Continuation for Women in Philosophy” (2017) Analysis
• “Powerful Properties, Powerless Laws” (2017), in Causal Powers, OUP, ed., Jonathan Jacobs.
• “Fission May Kill You (But Not for the Reasons You Thought)” (2016) PPR
• “The Universe Had One Chance” (2016) Philosophy of Science

Read her CV here.