Sarah-Jane Leslie
November 2, 2015
7 p.m.
Vollum lecture hall
“Cultures of Genius and Academic Gender Gaps”
Free and open to the public
Sarah-Jane Leslie is the Class of 1943 Professor of Philosophy, the director of the linguistics program, and the founding director of the cognitive science program at Princeton University. She is also affiliated faculty in the department of psychology, the University Center for Human Values, and the gender and sexuality studies program.
Much of her work focuses on how we categorize and generalize information about the world around us. As part of this project, she examines how the language young children hear shapes their perception of social groups, and how this relates to stereotyping and prejudice. Most recently, she has been examining gender gaps in educational and career choices.
Leslie's work has appeared in journals such as Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Philosophical Review, The Journal of Philosophy, Cognitive Psychology, and Child Development and been covered by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. She has appeared on NPR, WHYY, and CBC Radio. The recipient of multiple grants, including from the National Science Foundation, Leslie delivered the 2015 Gareth Evans Memorial Lecture at Oxford University and won the Stanton Prize from the Society for Philosophy and Psychology.
She is involved in various activities aimed at increasing academic diversity, such as serving as a mentor for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program, chairing the faculty advisory board for Minorities and Philosophy (MAP), and serving on the committee for faculty diversity at Princeton. Leslie is also involved in efforts to make academic work more accessible to a broader audience. She has given various public lectures and outreach presentations and anchors a series of video interviews called Philosophical Conversations with Sarah-Jane Leslie, which aims to provide free and accessible interviews with leading philosophers.