Mission and Vision

The David H. Kellogg Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics is a hub for cutting-edge interdisciplinary research and research-centered teaching in the humanities and social sciences.

RESEARCH FOCUS. Our interdependent globalized world faces a myriad of individual and collective decision-making problems that often cut across the boundaries of academic disciplines. Questions concerning market processes, government intervention, taxation, healthcare, sustainability, international relations, global trade, and justice all involve positive and normative elements, are multidimensional, and can be addressed adequately only through interdisciplinary analysis. The Center provides foundational research that is necessary for such analysis.

CROSS-COLLEGE INITIATIVE. The Center is one of the first research centers in the world that is dedicated to interdisciplinary research in PPE. The Center is housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences and operates in close collaboration with the College of Science. The Center advances the University’s Beyond Boundaries vision. It fosters research collaborations across campus and provides faculty and students with the opportunity to work collaboratively on some of the most pressing social and economic problems of our time.

PPE as a program of study was established at Virginia Tech in 2015. In 2020, the cross-college center was founded with an interdisciplinary research mission. In 2025, the Center was endowed.

RESEARCH-CENTERED TEACHING. The Center oversees two interdisciplinary undergraduate degree programs (a major and minor in PPE) that train students to become leaders in the 21st century. The degree programs provide students with the tools, methods, and knowledge to develop comprehensive solutions to complex interdisciplinary decision-making problems, solutions that are not only economically sound, but also socially, ethically, and politically informed. The degree programs are centered on an undergraduate research project.

ENGAGING PROGRAMMING. The Center maintains a highly active programming schedule. In addition to supporting other events on campus, the Center typically hosts over fifteen events per year. The Center organizes research-focused events, such as a research speaker series, research fellow panels, conferences, workshops, and public lectures, and student-centered events and activities, such as an undergraduate journal, reading groups, discussion colloquia, and a PPE Club. The Center’s programming fosters dialogue among faculty, students, and the public and supports the Center’s integration of research and teaching. We select guest speakers and make programming decisions based on suggestions of our core faculty, research fellows, affiliated faculty, stakeholders, students, and the interests of the wider community at Virginia Tech.

Past and present guest speakers include Kyoto Prize Winner Martha C. Nussbaum, Nobel Prize Winner Amartya Sen, New York Times bestselling author Dan Ariely, award-winning British historian Adam Tooze, Nobel Prize Winner Esther Duflo, award-winning philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist Kwame Anthony Appiah, MacArthur Fellow Grant Winner Elizabeth Anderson, American Legal Scholar Bruce Ackerman, and Nobel Prize Winner Daron Acemoglu (upcoming).

PPE COMMUNITY. In all its efforts, the Center is guided by principles of academic freedom, rigor, independence, and respect. The Center’s faculty and students come from across the globe and bring a variety of perspectives to social scientific research and teaching. In addition, the Center regularly invites scholars to discuss a wide range of socially relevant topics to help build a welcoming intellectual community.

Founding Director

Michael Moehler was the Founding Director of the PPE Program and the David H. Kellogg Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Virginia Tech.

During his career, Professor Moehler held Visiting Professorships in philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and its joint Program in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics with Duke University, as well as the University of Graz. In addition, he was a Faculty Fellow at the Parr Center for Ethics at UNC-Chapel Hill and a Research Fellow at the Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at the Murphy Institute at Tulane University. Finally, he served as John Stuart Mill Visiting Chair of Social Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hamburg and as Visiting Research Professor at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.

Professor Moehler has almost twenty years of research and teaching experience in PPE, spanning the U.S., U.K., and Europe. During his career, he also received several nominations and awards for research and teaching, including a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This award recognizes outstanding international research accomplishments and exceptional promise for lasting impact beyond one’s research field.

Center Staff

PPE Stakeholders

Affiliated Departments and Colleges