Pamela Hieronymi


Pamela Hieronymi is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is mainly known for her work in moral psychology.

Education and career

Hieronymi earned her A.B. from Princeton University in 1992 and earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2000. She has worked at UCLA since July 2000, where she was awarded tenure in 2007. She has presented her research widely, both nationally and internationally. In addition, she has appeared on Philosophy Talk public radio and her thoughts on technology and teaching were published by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
In 2010 she won the Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars from the American Council of Learned Societies. She spent the 2011–2012 academic year as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Philosophical work

An expert in moral psychology, Hieronymi has written widely on issues about responsibility and agency, as well as on reasons, trust, forgiveness, and the voluntariness of belief. The work has been influential and widely cited.

Media consulting

Hieronymi served as an advisor on moral philosophy and ethics for the popular NBC sit-com The Good Place, and subsequently became a “consulting philosopher” for the show; "surely a first in sitcom history." Hieronymi guided the show to feature the work of her dissertation advisor, Harvard emeritus professor T.M. Scanlon, and also advised the writers on "existentialism and the famous thought experiment known as the Trolley Problem," among other topics. In the final episode, she appeared as a cameo alongside political philosopher Todd May.

Selected articles