Karen Detlefsen
philosopher and academic administrator
Karen Elizabeth Detlefsen is the Vice Provost for Education at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also Professor of Philosophy in the School of Arts and Sciences and Affiliated Faculty of the Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality, and Women. She serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the History of Ideas.
Education and career
Detlefsen earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Toronto, an M.A. from the University of Western Ontario, and a B.A. in English and Philosophy from the University of Calgary. In 2021 she was an American Council of Learned Societies fellow. In 2021 Detlefsen was named vice-provost at the University of Pennsylvania.
Research
Detlefsen works on early modern philosophy, with particular specialization in the role of women in philosophy and the philosophy of education and of science.
Selected publications
The Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy (edited with Lisa Shapiro). Routledge. 2023.
Women and Liberty, 1600–1800: Philosophical Essays (edited with Jacqueline Broad).
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q129281611. VIAF identifies the subject as 256818026. The Library of Congress control number is n2012044820. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2021, 2023, 1600 and 1800.
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This entry incorporates text from “Karen Detlefsen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.