Bovens attended the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, studying Social Sciences, before moving to the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Here he completed an MA in Sociology, an MA in philosophy and a PhD in philosophy in 1990.

He was a research assistant in the National Fund for Scientific Research in Belgium, before gaining a professorship in the department of philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1990.

Bovens was Director of the Philosophy, Probability and Modeling (PPM) research group with Stephan Hartmann at the University of Konstanz, Germany from 2002—2005, and an editor of Economics and Philosophy from 2002-2007.

He has been a professor in the department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics since 2004 .

Books

• Bayesian Epistemology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003 (with Stephan Hartmann)
• Nancy Cartwright’s Philosophy of Science Forthcoming, Routledge, 2007 (Edited with Stephan Hartmann and Carl Hoefer)

Articles

• 'The Rhythm Method and Embryonic Death', Journal of Medical Ethics, 32, (2006), pp. 355—56.

Article reviewed in the New York Times, June 13, 2006.