Cecelia Watson

Watson attended St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe), earning a B.A. in Liberal Arts.[2] She then did graduate work at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Robert J. Richards and Lorraine Daston.[3] She earned an M.A. in Philosophy and a Ph.D. in Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science.[4]

From 2011 to 2013, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and a scientific advisor to Haus der Kulturen der Welt, working on a joint project on the Anthropocene hypothesis.[5][4] She then was awarded an American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellowship, which she undertook at Yale University from 2013 to 2015 with a joint appointment in the Department of Philosophy and the Program in the Humanities.[6]

She is currently Scholar in Residence at Bard College, with no departmental affiliation listed.[7] She has stated that she considers her academic work equally informed by the disciplines of history and of philosophy and that she rejects traditional disciplinary boundaries and specializations.[8]

Watson has written for The New York Times,[9] NBC,[10] The Paris Review,[11] LitHub,[12] and The Millions.[13] Her first book, Semicolon: The Past, Present and Future of a Misunderstood Mark was published in July 2019 by HarperCollins in the United States.[14] The book argued in favor of the use of semicolons, and against traditional grammar rules.[15][14]

A version of the book for British readers was published in the United Kingdom by 4th Estate with the title Semicolon: How a Misunderstood Punctuation Mark Can Improve Your Writing, Enrich Your Reading and Even Change Your Life.[16]

In February 2022, Publishers Weekly announced that Watson's second book, covering the world of watch collecting and the watch industry, had been acquired by Riverhead Books.[17]