Jessica Isserow

Jess received her PhD from The Australian National University in 2018. She joined the University of Notre Dame in August 2024. Before that, she worked as a lecturer/Associate Professor at the University of Leeds for six years, where she directed the BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and led the Centre for Aesthetic, Moral, and Political Philosophy. Jess also serves as an Associate Editor at Analysis.

Jess has diverse research interests spanning across ethics, moral psychology, and meta-ethics. Her main research projects centre upon: (i) moral worth/moral praiseworthiness and 'praise-associated attitudes', such as pride and esteem; (ii) the nature of friendship and the relationship/potential conflicts between moral duties and duties of friendship; and (iii) the ethics of blame (e.g., hypocrisy, over-blaming) and blameworthiness over time. 

Representative Publications

‘Pride and Investment’, forthcoming in Ethics.

‘Self‐Esteem: On the Form of Self‐Worth Worth Having’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 104, 4: 686-719 (2023).

‘Doubts about Duty as a Secondary Motive’, Philosophy & Phenomenological Research 105,2: 276-298 (2022).

‘Subjunctive Hypocrisy,’ Ergo 9, 7: 172-199 (2022).

‘Moral Worth: Having it Both Ways,’ The Journal of Philosophy 117, 529-556 (2020).

‘Moral Worth and Doing the Right Thing by Accident,’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97, 251-264 (2019).

‘On Having Bad Persons as Friends,’ Philosophical Studies 175, 3099-3116 (2018).