Lily Hu

Lily Hu joins Yale as Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy. She works in philosophy of (social) science and political and social philosophy. Her current project concerns causal theorizing about the social world, with a particular focus on causal inference methodologies in the social sciences, how these various statistical frameworks treat and measure the “causal effect” of social categories such as race, and ultimately, how such methods are seen to back normative claims about racial discrimination and inequalities broadly. She also studies social scientific explanation more broadly, with special interest in historical explanation. In the past, she has worked on topics in machine learning theory and algorithmic fairness. She holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and Philosophy from Harvard University.