Dr. Perry Zurn, PhD
Perry Zurn is Visiting Associate Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University and Provost Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University. He researches primarily in political philosophy, critical theory, and lgbtq+ studies and collaborates in psychology and network neuroscience. He is especially interested in the politics of inquiry and voice, material histories of resistance, poetics, and ecologies. Zurn has produced 8 books. He is the author of Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry (2021), How We Make Each Other: Trans Life at the Edge of the University (2025), and Cisgender: A Disorienting History (forthcoming), as well as the co-author of Curious Minds: The Power of Connection (2022). He is also the co-editor of Trans Philosophy (2024), Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge (2020), and Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition (2016), as well as the co-editor and co-translator of Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group, 1970-1980 (2021).
Zurn is the author or coauthor of 90+ additional publications in philosophy, political theory, lgbtq+ studies, and network science and has given 200+ talks at local, national, and international venues. Zurn’s work has been featured in 50+ podcast, radio, and television shows, as well as in mainstream outlets such as Harvard Books, Talks at Google, and The Guardian. And his work has been generously funded by the American Philosophical Association, the Center for Curiosity, the Hypatia Fund, the Lee Somers Fund, and the Mellon Foundation. Zurn’s previous appointments include Fellow at Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities, Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s FQT Center, SSNAP Fellow at Duke University, Research Associate at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, and Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Curiosity in the School of Social Policy and Practice.
Zurn is an avid hiker, mushroom-hunter, and gardener. But his favorite thing is words.
