Jenny moved to Waterloo in 2019 after 24 years at the University of Sheffield, where she retains honorary status. She is a Professorial Fellow at the University of St Andrews for 2025-2029.Her primary interests are in Social and Political Philosophy of Language, Deception, and Feminist Philosophy. In recent years, much of her work has been on deception and racism in political speech, a topic which has kept her extremely busy recently. Her book Dogwhistles and Figleaves: How Manipulative Language Spreads Racism and Falsehood has recently been published by Oxford University Press. It explores certain commonalties in the communicative mechanisms that have allowed politicians to get away with much more obvious falsehood and racism than previously thought possible.
Along with Patrick Connolly and Sanford Goldberg, she recently published an edited volume, Conversations Online, with Oxford University Press. Jenny has also published Lying, Misleading and What is Said: An Exploration in Philosophy of Language and in Ethics (Oxford University Press 2012). It argued that considering the distinction between lying and misleading-- which seems to many an ethically significant one-- can help to shed new light on methodological disputes in philosophy of language over notions like what is said, semantic content, implicature, and the semantic/pragmatic distinction more generally. She also argues that careful attention to the way that communication works can shed new light on the ethical issues. (And she considers some fascinating real-world cases, feeding her lifelong obsession with political scandals but also branching out into such excellent topics as the Jesuit Doctrine of Mental Reservation.)
Jenny was Director of the (2011-2013) Leverhulme-funded Implicit Bias and Philosophy Project. She has published two co-edited volumes on implicit bias with Michael Brownstein, and she continues to lecture widely on this topic to a range of audiences. She is especially interested in helping institutions find methods to combat implicit biases, and she frequently advises on this topic. Her view is that structural and institutional solutions are the most effective means of doing this, and she works with the institutions at which she speaks to improve their policies and procedures. With Helen Beebee, she published two reports, ten years apart, for the British Philosophical Association and SWIP UK on the state of women in philosophy in the UK. The first of these was the first ever study of the gender imbalance in UK philosophy. Also with Helen Beebee, she authored guidelines for good practice on gender issues in philosophy-- these can be found at the BPA website, as the BPA/SWIP Good Practice Scheme. Jenny also runs What is Like to be a Woman in Philosophy and founded the Feminist Philosophers blog. She has done a lot of work bringing the problem of sexual harassment to the attention of Philosophy.
Jenny is now Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in the Study of Hatred, Misinformation, and Communication at the University of Waterloo. She is also Professorial Fellow at the University of St Andrews and an Honorary Professor at the University of Sheffield. She is currently Chair of the Analysis Committee and Board Member at Large for the American Philosophical Association. From 2009-2019, she was Director of the Society for Women UK, and from 2024-2025 she was President of CSWIP. In 2019-2020 she was President of the Mind Association. In 2011, she received the Distinguished Woman Philosopher Award from the (American) Society for Women in Philosophy.
Jenny has worked with UK Statistics Authority on developing a framework for understanding and classifying misleading uses of statistics, and clashed with the law for standing under trees. Yet her proudest accomplishment remains having been a consultant on a zombie movie script.
