Melissa Lane
Class of 1943 Professor of Politics
Director of University Center for Human Values
Princeton University
Melissa Lane is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University, and director of the University Center for Human Values (on leave in 2020-21 as Old Dominion Research Professor in the Humanities Council, Princeton University). She is also an associated faculty member in the Department of Classics and the Department of Philosophy at Princeton.
Research Interests
Melissa Lane is a political theorist whose work focuses primarily on ancient Greek philosophy, especially the writings of Plato. She also works on the reception and uses of Plato, informing work which she also does in contemporary political theory, including especially on issues in regard to scientific knowledge, communication, and climate change.
Publications
Among Melissa Lane’s publications are four monographs: Method and Politics in Plato’s Statesman (1998); Plato’s Progeny (2001); Eco-Republic (2011 UK / 2012 US); and The Birth of Politics (2015; first published in the UK as Greek and Roman Political Ideas). Her next monograph, Of Rule and Office: Plato’s Ideas of the Political, will be published by Princeton University Press in 2022.
