Julia Staffel

Julia Staffel is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Colorado Boulder. She holds a PhD from the University of Southern California (2013) and previously held positions at Washington University in St. Louis and the Australian National University. Her research focuses on formal epistemology, particularly the application of idealized rationality models to human non-ideal thinkers. She authored Unsettled Thoughts: A Theory of Degrees of Rationality (OUP, 2019), exploring Bayesian rationality for imperfect agents, and her upcoming book Unfinished Business: Rational Attitudes in Reasoning (OUP, 2025) examines transitional attitudes during intellectual processes. Her work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies and Washington University's First Book Fellowship.

Key research areas include higher-order evidence, epistemic utility, and the philosophy of cognitive science. She has also contributed to pedagogical initiatives on teaching formal methods and addressing AI in education, including workshops on online teaching during the pandemic. Beyond academia, she enjoys textile-related hobbies like knitting and aerial silks.

Professional highlights include over 15 peer-reviewed articles in top journals such as Noûs, Philosophical Studies, and Philosophical Perspectives. Her current projects integrate cognitive science findings to refine philosophical models of reasoning processes.