University of Illinois College of Law

About

Colleen Murphy is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the Roger & Stephany Joslin Professor of Law in the College of Law. Dr. Murphy also holds courtesy appointments as a Professor of Philosophy and of Political Science. She is the Chair of the campus committee for the Illinois Scholars at Risk Program. At University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Murphy has served as the Director of the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program in the Illinois Global Institute (IGI), Acting Executive Director of the IGI, a Humanities Research Institute – Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow in Legal Humanities, and an Associate of the Center for Advanced Study. She has held a Laurence Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellowship at the Princeton University Center for Human Values, a Public Voices Fellowship for the University of Illinois System, and a Visiting Professorship at the 4.TU Centre for Ethics in the Netherlands. Prior to joining the Illinois faculty, Professor Murphy was on the faculty at Texas A&M University.  

Dr. Murphy is a scholar and teacher in the areas of moral, political, and legal theory. Her research focuses specifically on political reconciliation and transitional justice in response to entrenched injustice, and on the legal and ethical dimensions of risks. She is the author of The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2017), which received the 2017 North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award and the Wayne R. LaFave Award for Excellence in Faculty Scholarship from the University of Illinois College of Law. She is also the author of A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Dr. Murphy is the co-editor of several interdisciplinary edited volumes, including Technology and Equality (Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming 2024), Climate Change and its Impacts: Risks and Inequalities (Springer 2018), Risk Analysis of Natural Hazards (Springer 2015) and Engineering Ethics for a Globalized World (Springer 2015). She has authored or co-authored more than 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, law review articles, and anthologized book chapters in prominent venues including the American Journal of Political Science, Law and Philosophy, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Risk Analysis, and the University of Illinois Law Review.  

Dr. Murphy is the co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Transitional Justice and serves on the Editorial Boards of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, FQP/PPI Filosofia e questioni Pubbliche/ Philosophy and Public Issues, Law and Philosophy, Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, and the Palgrave Handbooks in the Philosophy of Law Book Series. She is a member of the Executive Board for the National Institute for Engineering Ethics and has received over $1M of funding to support her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Qatar National Research Fund, and the US Army Corps of Engineers. Dr. Murphy has delivered more than 160 invited keynotes and lectures at universities throughout the United States and in 12 additional countries worldwide. She has also written or recorded more than a dozen popular op-eds and podcasts about her research for venues including the Boston Review, Chicago Tribune, The Conversation, and Ms. Magazine. 

Dr. Murphy holds a M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame.

Visit Professor Murphy’s website and follow her on Twitter @drcolleenmurphy.

Education

PhD, MA University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
BA University of Notre Dame

Areas of Expertise

Jurisprudence
Tort Law
Transitional Justice
Political Theory
Engineering Ethics