Professor Alexandra Cook

I received my PhD in political philosophy at Cornell University and have taught in the College of The University of Chicago, at Colgate University (Hamilton, NY), at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and since 2001 I have been a member of the Philosophy Department, University of Hong Kong.

 

My major teaching and research interests are in early-modern philosophy, the European Enlightenment, including China‘s influence thereon, environmental philosophy and history and philosophy of science.

 

I have authored numerous publications on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s scientific interests, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and botany: the salutary science (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 2012). The book was awarded the 2013 John Thackray Medal of the Society for the History of Natural History (London) and the Arts Faculty Research Output Prize 2012-13 (University of Hong Kong).

 

My current research projects concern the herbarium as a scientific object and the circulation of materia medica from Asia to Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.