c:o/re short-term Fellow (08/12 − 23/12/2025)
Dr. Hill is a lecturer in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and affiliate faculty member in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, at the University of Wyoming. Her research interest is the philosophy of computer science, on which she writes a blog for the online Communications of the ACM, with several pieces published in the print edition.
Her teaching experience includes over 30 years of logic, computer science, and information systems courses for the University of Wyoming, University of Maryland University College (European Division), State University of New York at Binghamton, Metropolitan State College, and others. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science, two Master’s degrees, and a B.A. in Philosophy. She currently teaches ethics and professionalism in computing, and the philosophy of computing.
Desk to Discourse: Development of the Philosophy of Computing from Wordstar and VisiCalc
For a richer understanding of the interaction between computing and its users, Dr. Hill hopes to identify and follow features of mundane office software through their effects and implications to emerging philosophical questions. Some are known, and some are trivial, but we can also find questions of potential depth concerning the affordances and constraints of separation and structure, naming and values, and the proliferation of variables and objects in the world, all appropriate for the philosophy of computing. Dr. Hill is an officer in the Association for Philosophy and Computing, the new version of the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Philosophy and Computers, and will examine that connection in her work in Aachen. The philosophy of computing is still defining itself, in her view, inviting a broader scope of questions and investigations.
Publications (Selection)
Hill, Robin K. (2007). “How close did Kurt Gödel get to the University of Wyoming?”. SIGACT News, 38(2). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1272729.1272731
Hill, Robin K. (2016). What an Algorithm Is. Philosophy & Technology, 29(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-014-0184-5
Hill, Robin K. (2016). A Call for More Philosophy in the Philosophy of Computer Science. APA Newsletter on Computing and Philosophy, 15(2).
Hill, Robin K. (2023). Several online blog contributions for the Communications of the ACM, e.g., “Cook-Levin: The Ugly Underbelly is Good for Us”
