Bio

Dr. Perry Zurn, PhD

Perry Zurn is Visiting Associate Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University (‘24-’25). He is also Provost Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University, and affiliate faculty in the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies, the Honors Program, and the Antiracist Research and Policy Center. He researches primarily in political philosophy, critical theory, and transgender 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 7 books. He is the author of Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry (2021) and How We Make Each Other: Trans Life at the Edge of the University (Duke, 2025), 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 co-edited a special issue of Carceral Notebooks 12 (2017) and edited symposia in Foucault Studies (2021) and Theory and Event (2021). Zurn has just finished writing a book on the term “cisgender” and is currently writing one on the philosophy of gender.

Zurn is the author or coauthor of 90+ additional publications in philosophy, political theory, trans studies, and network science and has given 200+ talks at local, national, and international venues. His theoretical essays have appeared in venues such as Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, Theory & Event, and Transgender Studies Quarterly. And his scientific collaborations have appeared in venues such as Nature Human Behavior and Nature Neuroscience. 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 Diversity Fund, the Lee Somers Fund, and the Mellon Foundation. Zurn is the co-founder of the Trans Philosophy Project and the associated Thinking Trans // Trans Thinking Conference. Zurn’s previous appointments include Fellow at Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities, Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies, 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.