Research Themes

Disagreement and Epistemic Governance

My current research develops a general framework for understanding how societies organize knowledge under conditions of persistent disagreement. This work introduces
the concept of epistemic governance, which refers to the institutional, communicative, and normative structures through which credibility is established, authority is exercised,
and disagreement is interpreted.

This framework builds on my earlier work on vaccine hesitancy, expertise, and misinformation, as well as my research on disagreement in public health. Rather than treating disagreement as something to be corrected, it examines how epistemic conflict is structured and managed within systems of authority.

Epistemic governance provides a unified account of how expertise, credibility, and trust operate across science-mediated contexts and offers tools for evaluating how scientific
authority should function in democratic societies.

Selected publications

Furman, K., & Goldenberg, M. J. “Disagreement in Public Health.” (pp. 497-507). The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Disagreement. Routledge (2024)
Understanding Misinformation (with Boumans & Leonelli). Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

Connection to broader work
This framework integrates my earlier research into a unified account of knowledge and
authority and represents the current focus of my research program.

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