James Fraser
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Academic Year 2017-18

James completed his PhD at the University of Leeds in 2016.

His thesis, entitled “What is Quantum Field Theory? Idealisation, Explanation and Realism in High Energy Physics”, brought together topics in the foundations of physics and general philosophy of science, focusing in particular on connections between renormalization theory and the contemporary scientific realism debate.

In his current project he is investigating theories which violate relativity at the fundamental level while recovering it as an approximation at suitably low energies. The hope is that a better understanding of this sort of 'effective' space-time structure will elucidate foundational issues in quantum field theory and quantum gravity.

Recent publications include: “Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking in Finite Systems”, Philosophy of Science (2016) and “The Real Problem with Perturbative Quantum Field Theory”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (forthcoming).