Catherine Herfeld

Predoctoral Research Fellow

Residence: October 1 - November 30, 2011 and January 1 - March 31, 2012

Profile

Catherine Herfeld is a PhD student at the chair of economics and philosophy at Witten/Herdecke University (supervisor Prof. C. Mantzavinos). Her dissertation traces the origins and philosophical foundations of rational choice theory. Catherine holds a diploma in economics (University of Heidelberg and Technical University Berlin) and an MSc in Philosophy of the Social Sciences from the London School of Economics. She has also worked as a research consultant in the Ecuadorian rainforest. Before coming to the MPIWG she has spent a year as a visiting scholar at the philosophy department at Columbia University in New York. She will join the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University as a Research Fellow in June 2012.

Her research interests include philosophy and methodology of the social sciences, especially economics; debates about explanation vs understanding in the social sciences; the historical development of mathematical economics in 20th century; the phenomenon of economics imperialism; the work of Amartya Sen.