Miranda Anderson

POSITIONS OF TRUST

• Film and Media Board of Studies, Creative Industries, Open University
• Royal Society of Edinburgh, Public Engagement Advisory Group (PEG)
• Royal Society of Edinburgh, Research Awards Committee
• Regional Director for Scotland of the JSPS Alumni Association
• UKRI Interdisciplinary Assessment College Panel

ACADEMIC MERITS 

• Emerita Royal Society of Young Academy of Scotland (2024-)
• Royal Society of Edinburgh's Young Academy of Scotland (2018-2024)
• Scottish Crucible
• European Crucible

Dr Miranda Anderson is a philosopher of the arts and humanities, a literary scholar, a cultural historian and an art curator. She explores ideas of the mind, self and world across disciplines, history and cultures. Dr Anderson was one of twelve inaugural Visiting Fellows at Edinburgh Futures Institute (2024-2025). She is an honorary fellow in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and an Associate Lecturer with the Open University in the College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

She completed her MSc and PhD in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, after several years travelling and working in Europe and Asia, following on from her BA (Hons) in History at University College London. Her travel abroad has included several years in Japan, first as a Monbukagakusho Research Scholar, supported by the Japanese Embassy in London, and later as a Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Dr Anderson was awarded an Early Career Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust to pursue work on a book, The Renaissance Extended Mind, which explores parallels (and contrasts) between recent philosophical theories on the embodied and extended mind and ideas and practices in literary, philosophical, and scientific texts circulating between the fifteenth and early-seventeenth century. 

Dr Anderson is working on a monograph revealing the fission-fusion nature of minds, selves and worlds, and illuminating the value of the arts and humanities. An international symposium was held at the Royal Society of Edinburgh with the Japan Soceity for the Promotion of Science to explore the topic, with a JSPS-RSE report forthcoming. Two opinion pieces on her development of the fission-fusion approach have been published by the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy (SKAPE) . She has articles on fission-fusion aesthetics and ethics forthcoming in an edited book on Immersion and in an article on Steve McQueen's Small Axe series.

She was Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded Art of Distributed Cognition project, curating a contemporary art exhibition, The Extended Mind, with Talbot Rice Gallery (2019-2020).The exhibition explored an array of ways in which aspects of the world beyond our brain, such as our bodies, objects, language, ideas, other people and environments can, and often do, expand our cognitive capacities. Along with the History of Distributed Cognition project, this provided an impact case study for REF 2021: Introducing Distributed Cognition to New Audiences (Changing how galleries and museums think about themselves and how people think about them).

Dr Anderson initiated and was a Research Fellow on the AHRC-funded project A History of Distributed Cognition (2014-18). The project explored the expression and suppression of the paradigm of distributed cognition from classical antiquity to the mid-twentieth century and she is an editor on the four volumes published by Edinburgh University Press (2018-20). 

She edited an interdisciplinary book on the history of the mirror as an object and as an image in art and texts, The Book of the Mirror. She has also published several papers on her research in Japan with Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro; these explore the implications of robotics for understandings of human nature. More generally, her recent publications examine relations between research in philosophy of mind and cognitive science and in the arts and humanities, and considers the ways in which these disciplines can inform each other. She is also interested in how the digital humanities can contribute to our reading of literary texts, particularly in terms of assessing the attribution of aesthetic qualities.

Research activity

As conceptual lead on the development of the prototype mobile and web app 'Palimpsest: Literary High Street' she came up with the idea for the AHRC-funded project. Palimpsest enables users to access fictional and historical texts set in Edinburgh either via the webpage or via their mobile while exploring the city. The project was awarded a British Library Labs 2015 Award for Research.

She particpated in Scottish Crucible in 2017, then in the inaugural European Crucible in 2021, and again in 2024. The Crucible schemes are designed for national research leaders and include training in policy at the Scottish Parliament, as well as in public engagement and international collaboration.

Dr Anderson was a collaborator on network grants funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the AHRC on the 'Cognitive Experience of Verbal versus Screen-based Narrative and the Potential Role of the Episodic Memory System'.

Dr Anderson was an Associate Researcher on The Balzan Project, based at St John's College, Oxford, and directed by Prof. Terence Cave. This interdisciplinary project explored the topic of ‘Literature as an Object of Knowledge’ and focused on cognitive approaches to literary studies. 

• Advanced Research Methods (SPS/EFI) Workshop

• Mind, Subjectivity and Literature

• Critical Practice: Performance

• Dissertation Supervision

• Shakespeare’s Comedies: Identity and Illusion

• Shakespeare: Modes and Genres

• MSc in Design and Digital Media

• Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities Workshops (2022, 2023, 2024)

• External Examiner, English Literature PhD, University of Strathclyde (2023)

Miranda is a member of the New School of the Anthopocene's Teaching Ensemble. As an invited Guest Lecturer at Philipps-University Marburg (2024), Dr Anderson led a session on 4E Cognition and Atmosphären in ancient to contemporary religions. At Volda University College, Norway (2023), Dr Anderson collaborated in teaching a seminar on Nature and Poetry. She was invited to teach on the Visual and Verbal Signs MA at Stavanger University (2022). She was awarded an Anniversary Fellowship in Philosophy and Literature (2018-21) by the University of Stirling for research which addresses the needs of society. She was a Guest Lecturer in English Literature in Autumn semester of 2021 at the University of Stirling. She was a Nominated Fellow at the University of Edinburgh's IASH from March to September 2018. 

Talk on Shakespeare and the Mind | School of Advanced Study (sas.ac.uk)

Panel on 'The Extended Mind', Birbeck Arts Week

Miranda Anderson: Academia edu

Linked In