Rate My Professor Michael Lamb

Michael Lamb is the F. M. Kirby Foundation Chair of Leadership and Character, Senior Executive Director of the Program for Leadership and Character, and Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities at Wake Forest University. He earned a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University, a B.A. in political science from Rhodes College, and a second B.A. in philosophy and theology from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He also holds an honorary degree from Maryville College. Lamb has taught interdisciplinary courses in politics, ethics, and religion at Oxford, Princeton, Rhodes College, and Wake Forest University. Prior to his current roles, he served as Dean of Leadership, Service, and Character Development for Rhodes Scholars, helped launch the Oxford Character Project as an Associate Fellow, advised universities on character education and civic engagement, and worked as chief of staff for political campaigns for state senate, governor, and U.S. Congress in Tennessee. At Wake Forest, he collaborates with the community to develop programs in leadership and character and serves as principal investigator on major grants from the Lilly Endowment Inc. to build the capacity of colleges and universities to educate character. He leads efforts including the Educating Character Initiative, which catalyzes a broader movement on character in higher education.

Lamb's interdisciplinary research centers on the ethics of citizenship and the role of virtues in public life, virtue ethics, leadership and character development, religion and politics, ethics and public policy, and politics and literature. He is the author of A Commonwealth of Hope: Augustine’s Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 2022) and co-editor of The Arts of Leading: Perspectives from the Humanities and the Liberal Arts (Georgetown University Press, 2024), Cultivating Virtue in the University (Oxford University Press, 2022), and Everyday Ethics: Moral Theology and the Practices of Ordinary Life (Georgetown University Press, 2019). His scholarship appears in leading journals such as the American Political Science Review, Review of Politics, Journal of Religious Ethics, Journal of Moral Education, and Journal of Character Education, as well as edited volumes. For teaching excellence, Lamb received the George Kateb Teaching Award for Best Preceptor from Princeton’s Department of Politics, the Teaching Excellence Award from Oxford’s Humanities Division, and a Teaching Award from Wake Forest’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching. He is also a published poet.