Maureen Donnelly is a contemporary analytic philosopher specializing in formal ontology, mereology, and spatial reasoning. She is affiliated with the National Center for Ontological Research (NCOR) at the University at Buffalo, where her work bridges foundational metaphysics and applied ontology. Her research examines parthood relations, location, and the formal structure of ontological frameworks, with attention to problems surrounding relational properties and trope theory.
Contributed to the formal analysis of parthood and spatial location in applied ontology
Critically examined the adequacy of relational trope theories as responses to the problem of relations
Developed work connecting mereotopology to foundational questions in biomedical and scientific ontology
Collaborated on ontological frameworks used in the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) research program