Morrison became interested in the philosophy of science while an undergraduate research assistant in the Department of Biophysics at
Dalhousie University. She went on to graduate and post-graduate degrees at the
University of Western Ontario, earning her PhD in 1987. Before joining U of T, she taught at Stanford University and the University of Minnesota. In Toronto, she received tenure in 1992 and gained promotion to the rank of full professor in 1998. Her early work included examination of how concrete insight is extracted from abstract mathematical representations. Later she went on to working on the epistemic value of computer simulations. Morrison taught at
Stanford University and the
University of Minnesota. She was a professor at the
University of Toronto from 1989 until her retirement in 2019. She also held research fellowships at the
Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, the Centre for Mathematical Philosophy at
LMU Munich, and the Centre for the Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences at the
London School of Economics. == Personal life ==