Andrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist whose work centers on what she calls a "navigational approach" to the mind. She holds degrees in philosophy and neuroscience from the University of Georgia in Athens and Humboldt University of Berlin, and has also been a researcher at the Northoff Lab at the University of Ottawa. Her main research interests include the following.

Cognition as navigation, or "way-making." This is the core of her work. She proposes a new metaphor for understanding cognition: cognition as navigation or way-making. In her own description, she has spent over a decade developing a navigational approach to the philosophy of mind, the idea being that minds are ecological, bodily, and active, that they are dynamic, and that they extend beyond brains even though brains still matter. Her podcast project grew out of research for her dissertation on way-making and the navigational approach to the study of cognition.

The hippocampus and the neuroscience of memory and movement. Coming from a neuroscience background, she has a particular fondness for the hippocampus, the seahorse-shaped brain region associated with memory and movement. This connects naturally to her navigation-based view of mind.

Embodied cognition, phenomenology, and extended mind. In interviews she has discussed phenomenology and embodied cognition, moving beyond disciplinary dichotomies, philosophy as a way of life, and cultural scaffolding and the extended mind.

Moving "beyond dichotomy," care, and consciousness. Her recent work draws on philosophy, neuroscience, urban planning, ecology, biology, and navigability heuristics, reframing care as life's most crucial action and challenging rigid separations between ontology, epistemology, and axiology. She has signaled plans to tackle consciousness, representation, agency, self, mind, and technology through the lens of care, and her book on this is Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness.

She also brings these ideas to a broader audience: she hosts the Love and Philosophy – Beyond Dichotomy podcast, interviewing prominent thinkers about mind, cognition, and experience, and writes a Substack called Waymaking.