Professor Richard Pettigrew FBA
- Fellow type
- UK Fellow
- Year elected
- 2026
- Subjects
- Philosophy
- Sections
- Philosophy
Summary
Richard Pettigrew grew up along the Scottish coast east of Edinburgh. He read for a BA in Mathematics & Philosophy at Oxford and then a MA in Philosophy and a PhD in Mathematical Logic at Bristol. He joined the Department of Philosophy at Bristol as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in 2008, then as a Lecturer in 2011, Reader in 2012, and Professor in 2014. In March 2026, he became a Member of the Academia Europaea. From October 2026, he will return to Oxford as the Wykeham Professor of Logic and Fellow of New College.
His early research covered mathematical logic and the philosophy of mathematics; more recently, he has worked on the foundations of Bayesian epistemology and decision theory; and he is currently beginning to work at the intersection of decision theory, epistemology, and ethics. His books include 'Accuracy and the Laws of Credence', 'Choosing for Changing Selves', and 'Epistemic Risk and the Demands of Rationality', and he has published over fifty peer-reviewed articles.
Together with colleagues at Bristol, in 2013, he designed and ran the Foundation programme in Arts and Social Sciences, which provides a route into higher education for people without traditional qualifications. They then built on that experience to propose large-scale reforms to higher education provision in their book, 'Who Are Universities For?'