Piers Turner

Piers Norris Turner is Associate Professor of Philosophy and (by courtesy) Political Science. He is also co-coordinator for the interdisciplinary major in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE). His research focuses on utilitarianism and liberal political thought, especially as it relates to John Stuart Mill, open society, and public reason, and he is a member of the editorial board at Utilitas. 

From 2019-2025, Piers served as Director of Ohio State's Center for Ethics and Human Values (CEHV), a university center working across campus. CEHV's programs grew significantly in those years, and Piers played a central role in drafting the university's Shared Values and developing CEHV's Civil Discourse for Citizenship initiative. To further that work, he is now the University Initiatives Coordinator at CEHV and serves on the steering committee of the Dialogue CoLab hosted by Vanderbilt University. From 2019-2024, he also served on the faculty advisory board of OSU's Sustainability Institute. In 2023, he received the President and Provost's Award for Distinguished Faculty Service.

Recently, Piers led a team of editors on a new scholarly edition of On Liberty (Hackett 2026) that recognizes John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill as co-authors, and supplies neglected supplementary readings from both authors that help to illuminate the main text.