Sarah-Jane Leslie (Ph.D., Princeton, 2007) is the Class of 1943 Professor of Philosophy. She has previously served as Dean of the Graduate School, Vice Dean for Faculty Development in the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, Director of the Program in Linguistics, and Founding Director of the Program in Cognitive Science at Princeton University. She is also affiliated faculty in the Department of Psychology and various other centers and programs. She is the author of numerous articles in philosophy and psychology, published in journals such as Science, PNAS, Philosophical Review, and Noûs.

Much of her work is focused on gender gaps in educational and career choices. Her finding that academic gender gaps are most pronounced in disciplines that emphasize the need for “raw brilliance” was named as one of 2015’s most interesting scientific findings by Edge. She also examines how we categorize and generalize information about the world around us, and how the language young children hear shapes their perception of social groups. She is also interested in machine learning/artificial intelligence and is Princeton’s lead in an international consortium on Philosophy, AI, and Society.

She has delivered the Andrew Carnegie Lecture at the University of Aberdeen, the Gareth Evans Memorial Lecture at Oxford University, the Daniel Greenberg Lecture at Reed College, and was the 2015 recipient of the Stanton Award from the Society for Philosophy and Psychology. Her work has been covered extensively in the media, including by the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Guardian. She has appeared on BBC, NPR, WHYY, and CBC Radio, and on television on NBC.