About

About Me

I'm a Midwesterner by birth and moral instincts. I grew up in St. Louis and went to college at the University of Notre Dame. Once I realized that academia would be more conducive to my flourishing than law school, I went on to do a Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I taught for three years at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Maryland before joining Georgetown's philosophy department in 2002.

I work mostly in virtue ethics, Kantian ethics, and the space in between. I also dabble in bioethics and other areas of practical ethics.  Having once aspired to be Miss Manners, I often find myself writing about various philosophical dimensions of etiquette. During the pandemic, this turned into a subspeciality on the ethics and etiquette of Covid-19. You can find out more about my research by clicking on the above links. 

My husband and I live in Maryland. We have two daughters and two exuberant dogs. Insofar as I have hobbies, they include knitting (badly), baking (well), and gardening (middling). I played middle linebacker on my college interhall football team. I have read every Jane Austen novel more times than I can count.  I am a 2016 graduate of the Icelandic Elf School.

To find out more about my work, click on the tabs.  If you need an official bio, you can find one below. If you're really bored and want my entire CV, feel free to email me at: Karen dot Stohr at georgetown dot edu. 

BIO (142 words)

Karen Stohr is the Ryan Family Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy at Georgetown University and a Senior Research Scholar in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. Her primary research area is ethics, especially contemporary Kantian and Aristotelian ethics. She is particularly interested in the ways in which moral values and ideals get expressed in social life. Stohr is the author of three books—On Manners (Routledge, 2011); Minding the Gap: Moral Ideals and Moral Improvement (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Choosing Freedom: A Kantian Guide to Life (Oxford University Press, 2022), as well as articles on topics like friendship, beneficence, practical wisdom, moral imagination, social conventions around disability, and the moral aims of dinner parties. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washingtonian, Notre Dame Magazine, and other publications. She is also a frequent guest on radio shows and podcasts.