INQUIRY LAB
COGITO EPISTEMOLOGY RESEARCH CENTRE

Inquiry Lab

Norms of Inquiry

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Dates: September 2026 – August 2029

Fellow: Christoph Kelp (Honorary Director, COGITO; University of Birmingham)

Funding: Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship (GBP 169,830)

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Epistemology has traditionally investigated how our beliefs should respond to evidence. However, we are not mere passive recipients of evidence: epistemic agency is also constituted by how we inquire and gather evidence. Knowing how to inquire well matters, especially now that misinformation levels are higher than ever, and it is increasingly difficult to know which sources to trust. While research has started to focus on inquiry, a systematic, comprehensive study of how we should inquire is still missing in the literature. This project addresses this important knowledge gap, by producing the first systematic and comprehensive study of norms of inquiry.

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The fellowship produces a monograph on the norms of inquiry and a series of articles, and connects to COGITO's wider work on inquiry, including the Knowledge and AI Lab's work on AI-assisted inquiry and the KNOW-HOW project's account of judgment as something we know how to do.