Meghan Sullivan is the Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, where she directs the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, the university’s hub for research and teaching in ethics. The Institute houses the Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Center for Virtue Ethics and the Notre Dame–IBM Technology Ethics Lab, and runs residential fellowship programs for faculty, nonprofit leaders, and faith leaders. Sullivan is the principal investigator on over $70M in active grants, including the DELTA Network the Love Ethic Network.
Sullivan is deeply interested in the ways philosophy contributes to the good life and the best methods for promoting philosophical thought. She has served as PI for major grants to advance ethics and human flourishing, from agencies including the John Templeton Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Mellon Foundation, and the NEH. Time Biases, her 2018 book with Oxford University Press, offers philosophical guidance about how to navigate the puzzles that the passage of time poses to rational planning. It was featured in a 2021 New Yorker piece. In 2022, Sullivan published The Good Life Method with Penguin Press (co-authored with her teaching collaborator Paul Blaschko) based on a wildly popular introductory philosophy course she developed at Notre Dame called “God and the Good Life.” Since 2016, God and the Good Life has accompanied thousands of Notre Dame students through the process of developing a philosophical plan for their lives. In the past, Sullivan has collaborated with faculty in other departments to offer courses on NBC’s The Good Place, Ted Chiang’s science fiction, and Thom Browne’s fashion empire.
Sullivan is currently finishing her third book, Loving Strangers (under contract with Oxford University Press). She was a main stage speaker at TED Next in 2025. And in 2026 she was the inaugural guest on David Brooks’ Permanent Questions podcast (The Atlantic). She is a frequent commentator for media outlets interested in debates about human flourishing and perspectives from faith communities on artificial intelligence.
Sullivan has been honored with one of Notre Dame’s Joyce Awards for Teaching, with the Provost’s All-Faculty Team Award, and with the City of South Bend’s 40 Under 40 Award. In 2025 she joined the Board of Directors of Commonweal. Sullivan holds degrees from the University of Virginia (B.A.: Philosophy and Politics, Highest Distinction), Oxford (B.Phil: Philosophy), and Rutgers (Ph.D.: Philosophy), and studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (Balliol College). Sullivan enjoys cooking, building elaborate Lego sets, reading science fiction, and traveling the world. She cheers for the Fighting Irish and Virginia Cavaliers in all of their endeavors, and when they play each other she has a rational crisis.
