Boden was appointed lecturer in philosophy at theUniversity of Birmingham in 1959. She became aHarkness Fellow atHarvard University from 1962 to 1964.[5] She then returned to Birmingham for a year before moving to a lectureship in philosophy and psychology at theUniversity of Sussex in 1965, where she was appointed as reader, then professor in 1980.[6] She was awarded a PhD degree in social psychology (with a specialism in cognitive studies) by Harvard in 1968.[7]
She credited reading "Plans and the Structure of Behavior" byGeorge A. Miller with giving her the realisation that computer programming approaches could be applied to the whole of psychology.[8]
Boden became Dean of the School of Social Sciences in 1985.[6] Two years later she became the founding dean of theSchool of Cognitive and Computing Sciences (COGS), precursor of the university's later Department of Informatics. From 1997 she was a research professor ofCognitive Science in the department ofinformatics, where her work encompassed the fields of artificial intelligence, psychology, philosophy, and cognitive and computer science.[9]
In 2001 Boden was appointed Officer of theOrder of the British Empire for her services in the field of cognitive science.[6] The same year she was also awarded an honorary doctor of science from the University of Sussex.[6] She also received an honorary degree from the University of Bristol.[12] A PhD scholarship that is awarded annually by the department of informatics at the University of Sussex was named in her honour.[13]
In February 2017, Boden, along with other researchers, participated in a debate organized by the British Academy on the readiness of humans to develop romantic relationships with robots.[14]
Boden was married to John Spiers, a writer and publisher, from 1967 until 1981. They had a son and a daughter.[15]
Boden had a faible for the colour purple and the Cook Islands, spending vacations there for 30 years.[15] She died in Brighton on 18 July 2025, at the age of 88.[1][16][3]
^Noam ChomskySymposium on Margaret Boden, Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science, Oxford (2006) two volumes. Reviewed inArtificial Intelligence Volume 171, Issue 18, (December 2007) Pages 1094–1103
