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. 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.
Upcoming & Recent Events
April 21 / 6:00 PM EDT
Did the Greeks Believe Their Lawgivers Invented Law?
April 8 / 4:30 PM EDT
Guarding as ruling: reigning and officeholding in a kallipolis (Republic Books II-VII)
Stanford Political Theory Workshop – by Zoom
Looking ahead: May 14
Plato on Rule
Keynote panel for the Annual Conference for the Study of Political Thought, held at Columbia University
Looking ahead: 2023
Isaiah Berlin Lectures
Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University