Dana Kay Nelkin

Dana Kay Nelkin is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. She is currently on sabbatical for the 2024-2025 academic year, serving as a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Her primary research focuses on moral responsibility, free will, moral psychology, and their intersections with law, ethics, and empirical studies.

Education: B.A. in Philosophy and Plan II (Liberal Arts) from the University of Texas at Austin; Ph.D. in Philosophy from UCLA. She is also an Affiliate Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law.

Research interests include normative ethics, the psychology of moral judgment (e.g., Doctrine of Double Effect), forgiveness, and the role of rationality in responsibility. She co-leads The Moral Judgments Project, an interdisciplinary collaboration exploring moral principles through philosophy and psychology.

Grants include UC San Diego Chancellor’s Research Excellence Scholarship (2018–2019) and a grant from the UC San Diego Institute for Practical Ethics. She has published widely in journals like Philosophical Studies, Cognition, and Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Teaching includes courses on free will, moral psychology, and biomedical ethics. She has collaborated with psychologists like Craig McKenzie and Samuel Rickless on empirical moral studies.