Exeter College Fellow awarded major UKRI Grant for Interdisciplinary Neurotechnology Research
Professor Mona Simion, Michael Cohen Fellow in Philosophy at Exeter College, has been awarded a major interdisciplinary grant of approximately £1 million from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) for a new project exploring the ethical and epistemological challenges raised by emerging neurotechnologies.
The project, entitled Navigating the Neural Frontier: Embedding Ethics and Epistemology in Neurotech, brings together researchers from philosophy, neuroscience, and physics across the University of Glasgow and the University of Oxford. The funding will establish the MindTech Research Lab, a major inter-university research initiative dedicated to investigating the philosophical questions surrounding technologies designed to repair, monitor, and enhance brain function.
Professor Simion’s research spans epistemology, philosophy of language, moral and political philosophy, philosophy of AI, and philosophy of information, alongside interdisciplinary collaborations with neuroscience, psychology, computer science, and medicine. She is the author of several influential books, including Resistance to Evidence (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Shifty Speech and Independent Thought (Oxford University Press, 2021), and Sharing Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 2021, with Christoph Kelp), and Conceptual Engineering: The Epistemology, Ethics, and Politics of Meaning Production (Oxford University Press, 2026, with C. Kelp). Her forthcoming publications include Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence (Cambridge University Press, with C. Kelp).
The new UKRI-funded initiative will examine how rapidly developing neurotechnologies are reshaping understanding of the human mind, knowledge, agency, and responsibility. In addition to analysing the ethical and epistemological implications of these technologies, the project also aims to contribute to the development of new forms of philosophically informed neurotechnology.
Professor Simion is currently also leading the European Research Council-funded KnowledgeLab: Knowledge-First Social Epistemology project and serves as Ambassador of the European Research Council to the United Kingdom. Her work has received international recognition, including the 2018 Mind Fellowship and the Young Epistemologist Prize 2021. She is also an elected member of Academia Europaea and Vice-Chair of the Young Academy of Europe.
Further information about the project, its research aims, and collaborators is available via the MindTech Research Lab website.
