Elizabeth Anderson

Elizabeth Anderson is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She earned her BA from Swarthmore College in 1981 and her PhD in philosophy from Harvard University in 1987. After teaching for one year at Swarthmore College, she joined the Philosophy Department at University of Michigan in 1987, and has occasionally taught at the Law School. Professor Anderson designed University of Michigan's Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program, and was its founding director for two years. She has won fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and Guggenheim Foundations, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and served as president of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association. She is the author of Value in Ethics and Economics (Harvard UP, 1993), The Imperative of Integration (Princeton UP, 2010), Private Government: How Employers Rule our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) (Princeton UP, 2017), and numerous, widely reprinted articles in journals of philosophy, law, and economics.

Current Work:

Anderson's current research is devoted to three projects. One advances and updates pragmatist moral epistemology, taking the abolition of slavery as its central case study. Another is on the history of egalitarianism from the origins of humanity to the early years of the Industrial Revolution. A subsequent volume will extend the history through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Finally, Anderson is working on questions of workplace governance, workers' rights, and what a just constitution of the workplace would look like.

Research Area Keyword(s):

political philosophy, feminist theory, democratic theory, social epistemology