Peter Stone

Biography

Peter Stone received his B.A. in Political Science from Pennsylvania State University in 1993. While at Penn State, he completed a Senior Honors Thesis entitled "Towards the Empowerment of Labor: The Allende Experience." He then entered postgraduate study in Political Science at the University of Rochester, receiving an M.A. in 1996 and a Ph.D. in 2000. His Dissertation was entitled "The Luck of the Draw: Revisiting the Lot as a Democratic Institution." From 2003 to 2010 he was Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He then spent a year as Faculty Fellow at Tulane University's Center for Ethics and Public Affairs before becoming Ussher Assistant Professor of Political Science (Political Theory) at Trinity College Dublin in fall 2011. Stone specializes in political theory, especially such areas as democratic theory, theories of justice, rational choice theory, and the philosophy of social science. He is particularly concerned with questions involving the scope and limits of human reason. He is the author of The Luck of the Draw: The Role of Lotteries in Decision Making (Oxford University Press, 2011) and the editor of Lotteries in Public Life: A Reader (Imprint Academic, 2011). He has published articles in such peer-reviewed journals as the Journal of Political Philosophy, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, Rationality and Society, Social Science Information, Social Theory and Practice, and Theory and Research in Education. He belongs to many professional societies including the American Political Science Association, the Association for Political Theory, the Bertrand Russell Society, the Political Studies Association, and the Political Studies Association of Ireland. When not working on political science, he enjoys swing dancing, the music of Leonard Cohen, and the occasional game of poker.

Research Interest

Stone specializes in political theory, especially such areas as democratic theory, theories of justice, rational choice theory, and the philosophy of social science. He is particularly concerned with questions involving the scope and limits of human reason. His secondary research interests include politics and religion and the philosophy of Bertrand Russell.