Prof Maggie Boden

Maggie Boden died last month.

I was lucky to go to university when I did. At the time Sussex courses ran as lectures, seminars, but also tutorials. Tutorials were made up of 3 or 4 students in the office of a professor, discussing the topic of study that week. For the courses I took, one of those professors was Maggie.

It was the first time in my life I was in the room with anyone quite like Maggie. Total confident command of tricky subjects (philosophy, psychology and AI), but warmth, humour, and kindness with it. I can still picture us sitting around a small, low coffee table, me being asked something about blindsight, and totally getting it wrong. Or meeting her in the lift when we were part of Social Sciences, or on the stairs when we moved over to the science side of campus.

I didn’t realise that Sussex was “the first institution in the world to offer interdisciplinary degrees”.  She led that for AI, forming and being the first dean of the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences (COGS). I remember her emails included us undergrads, questioning if it should be the school of cognitive science or sciences.

I’m still learning from Maggie as I read her Mind as Machine personal history of Cognitive Science. But the latest thing she taught me was just yesterday: I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind. 

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• Obituary: Professor Maggie Boden, University of Sussex Broadcast, 28 July 2025.
• Margaret Boden obituary, The Guardian, 1 August 2025.
• Death notices, The Argus, July 2025
• “the first institution in the world to offer interdisciplinary degrees” is from Cognitive and computing sciences, Maggie's chapter in Making the Future: a history of the University of Sussex (2011).