Dr Rosa W. Runhardt

Dr Rosa Runhardt is Assistant Professor in Philosophy of Science at Radboud University, the Netherlands, and visiting fellow at Clare Hall as well as the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge in Michaelmas and Lent term of 2025-2026.

Dr Runhardt specializes in philosophy of causation and philosophy of social science. Her work covers two main areas. Firstly, she uses analytic philosophical analysis to improve social scientific research methods, with an emphasis on case study methods and mixed methods, giving methodological advice to political scientists, sociologists and educational researchers. Secondly, she undertakes fundamental research into concept formation and measurement of social phenomena.

Dr Runhardt’s new project, which will begin at Cambridge, explores the ways in which macro-social entities like institutions and governments react to being categorized and measured by changing their attitudes and behaviour. She will develop a framework for ethical, valid measurement that researchers can use to deal with the aforementioned ‘reactive’ effect.

At Clare Hall, Dr Runhardt is accompanied by her husband, Yorick. He is a comedian, theatre-maker and part-time data scientist and developer.