An award-winning teacher and organizational leader, Dr. Sarah Pessin has spent decades researching and teaching medieval meaning-making across traditions. She also works on Emmanuel Levinas and on contemporary topics in pluralism, interfaith civics, democracy, and ethics. And she brings AI innovation, hands-on building, and curricular-meets-co-curricular energy into learning.

A full professor at University of Denver, she is the recipient of a Fulbright Award (2026), an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellowship (2023), and has served in two Program Director roles, one leading an intercultural center within the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, and one serving students in a Student Affairs role. She also serves as a learning development consultant and leads frequent trainings and workshops for a wide range of civic and corporate partners.

Featured by the Association of American Colleges & Universities for her intercultural work, Sarah has served as Creative Director for a Holocaust memorial and has won grants for civic leadership from Interfaith America, the Mellon Foundation, and the Council of Independent Colleges. She also won a shared governance award (2022) for her work building bridges between faculty and senior administrators as Faculty Senate President (2020-2022) and Chair of the Academic Planning Committee (2017-2020).

Sarah holds her MA and PhD in Philosophy from Columbia University and The Ohio State University. She has published 100+ research essays and has delivered 250+ presentations. She is the author of a book on the historical context and philosophical ethics of 11th century philosopher and poet Solomon Ibn Gabirol (Cambridge University Press), is co-editor for a multicultural medieval philosophy reader (Bloomsbury), and has served as a Senior Editor for a St Andrews encyclopedia project. She has published in key academic reference works, including Oxford Philosophical Concepts, Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge Companion to Islamic Philosophy, Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy, and Oxford Handbook of Jewish Philosophy.

She has also published op-eds with the Denver Post and Inside Higher Ed, writes popular political essays, and her recent work on ‘hard hope’ was featured by Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. She is also a collage artist and occasional stand-up comedian who in her free time builds whimsical animal science resources for K12 kiddos (a joyful nod to her high school wish of becoming a docent educator at the local science museum).