Ann V. Murphy

Professor
Department Chair

Photo: Ann V Murphy

Email: avmurphy@unm.edu
Hours: Research Leave Fall 2025

  • B.A. (Grinnell College, '96)
  • Ph.D. (University of Memphis, '02)

Research Interests:

My main areas of research are phenomenology and social and political philosophy, particularly theories of violence and nonviolence. My research focuses on questions of embodiment, vulnerability, and identity. I am the author of Violence and the Philosophical Imaginary (SUNY 2012) and have published essays in various journals including Hypatia, Continental Philosophy Review, Journal for the British Society of Phenomenology, and philoSOPHIA. With Gail Weiss and Gayle Salamon, I co-edited 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology (Northwestern 2020). I am currently at work on two research projects.  The first, Interworlds: Phenomenology and Care, explores ethical issues in caregiving through the lens of phenomenology.  The second, Ethics of Hunger: Corporeal Vulnerability and Structural Violence, explores a critical phenomenology of hunger alongside accounts of responsibility and vulnerability in 20th and 21st century Continental philosophy. 

At UNM, I teach classes on phenomenology, contemporary continental philosophy, ethics, bioethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of gender. Examples of recent graduate seminars include: Critical Phenomenology, Philosophies of Violence & Nonviolence, Ethics of Hunger, and Philosophy of Disability.  Additionally, I teach medical ethics in the UNM Combined BA/MD program and have participated as faculty in the Certificate Program in Clinical Ethics at the UNM Health Sciences Center.

Recent Publications:

 "The Spirited Interworld: Caregiving and the Liminal Phenomenology of Dementia" Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology. Vol. 7.1, 2024.

‘’The will to live and the meaning of life’: Hunger as vulnerability in French existential phenomenology.” Journal for the British Society for Phenomenology. 2018.

“Merleau-Ponty and the Innocence of Ontology.” Chiasmi International: International Trilingual Studies Concerning the Thought of Merleau-Ponty. No. 19. 2017.

VIOLENCE AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMAGINARY. SUNY Press. 2012.

“Corporeal Vulnerability and the New Humanism.” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. Special Issue on the Ethics of Embodiment. Eds. Debra Bergoffen and Gail Weiss. Volume 26, No.3. 2011.

“’Violence is Not an Evil:’ Ambiguity and Violence in Simone de Beauvoir’s Early Philosophical Writings.” philoSOPHIA: a journal of continental feminism. Volume 1, no.1. 2010.