Introduction to William Stephenson's Quest for a Science of Subjectivity

Honorary Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, Durham University, UK, having retired from his post as Senior Lecturer in 2006. His research interests include the impact of American pragmatist philosophy on the development of the human sciences, the dual disciplinary heritage of social psychology, and the development of mutualist thought in the human sciences. He is currently working on two major projects: a biography of William Stephenson (supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship) and the development of a non-cognitivist theory of representation. He has co-edited The Recovery of Rhetoric (with R.H. Roberts, Classical Press, 1993) and The Politics of Poslmodernity (with I. Velody, Cambridge University Press, 1998), and is the author of numerous papers on a variety of aspects of the history and theory of psychology, social cognition, and the psychology of music. Recent publications include ‘The affordances for social psychology of the ecological approach to social knowing’, Theory and Psychology 17(2): 265-95 (2007), ‘Adolescent motherhood: A Q-methodological re-evaluation of psychological and social outcomes’ (with J. Richards, M. Papworth, and S. Corbett), Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 17: 347-62 (2007), ‘Q Methodology’ (with S.R. Brown) in N.J. Salkind (ed.) Encyclopedia of Research Design (Sage, 2010). He is a Past President of the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences and a former Chair of the British Psychological Society History and Philosophy of Psychology Section. He is Editor of History of the Human Sciences.