My name is Shanna Slank. I'm a philosopher. 

I am a lecturing fellow in the Duke philosophy department, teaching courses there, in the Transformtive Ideas program, and in the Sanford School of Public Policy. 

From 2022-2205, I was a Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor in UNC-Chapel Hill's philosophy department and a researcher with the Kenan Ethics Institute at Duke. I worked on Walter Sinnott-Armstrong's Templeton grant 'The Evolution of Comity' and Felipe De Brigarde's project 'Memory & Forgiveness'. 

From 2019 to 2022, I was an assistant professor at Kansas State University.

From 2016-2019 I was a visiting PhD student at Ludwig Maximillian Universitat in Munich, Germany. I received my PhD in 2019 from University of Wisconsin-Madison.  

I study morality and what it takes to live well together in a highly pluralistic society. I focus on how gender, race, and class shape and often distort our moral understandings. At the heart of my work is the view that deep disagreement is not a problem to eliminate but a condition to honor—and that philosophy should help us find ways of flourishing together in its midst.

When I'm not doing philosophy, you can find me around Durham looking for ways to strenghten community. This year I'm leading the PTA at my oldest son's school, E.K. Powe Elementary, a wonderfully diverse community where about half of our students are eligible for free and reduced lunch and roughly a third are English language learners. I am lucky to be working alongside some remarkably dedicated parents to support our students and our teachers as best we can.