Jennifer M. Morton

During her time at CASBS, Jennifer M. Morton will work on a project tentatively titled “Redefining Poverty: Valuing and Aspiring Under Scarcity.”  By bringing social science research on poverty together with literature in the philosophy of agency, Morton hopes to develop the normative and descriptive resources to offer a more nuanced and insightful account of how poverty undermines agency and shapes the poor’s capacity to aspire, value, and lead flourishing lives.

Morton is Presidential Penn Compact Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment at the Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on how poverty and social class shape our agency. Her book Moving Up Without Losing Your Way: The Ethical Costs of Upward Mobility (Princeton University Press, 2019) was awarded the Grawemeyer Award in Education, the Frederic W. Ness Book Award, and selected as Princeton President Eisgruber’s Pre-Read for the Class of 2025. Morton has received the American Philosophical Association’s Scheffler Prize for her work in the philosophy of education and a Guggenheim fellowship. Morton was born and grew up in Lima, Peru. 

Website: www.jennifermmorton.com