Mark Alfano uses tools and methods from philosophy, psychology, and computer science to explore topics in social epistemology, moral psychology, and digital humanities. He studies how people become and remain virtuous, how values become integrated into people's lives, and how these virtues and values are (or fail to be) manifested in their perception, thoughts, feelings, deliberations, and actions. One of the guiding themes of his work is that normative philosophy without psychological content is empty, but scientific investigation without philosophical insight is blind.

Currently an Associate Professer in Macquarie University's Department of Philosophy, Mark received a doctorate from the Philosophy Program of the City University of New York Graduate Center (CUNY GC) in 2011. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study and the Princeton University Center for Human Values, as well as assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon, associate professor of ethics & philosophy of technology at Delft University of Technology, and professorial fellow at Australian Catholic University.

Mark works on social epistemology, moral psychology, and digital humanities. He also maintains an interest in Nietzsche, including a recent monograph titled Nietzsche’s Moral Psychology. His papers have appeared in numerous journals, including Philosophical Quarterly, Mind, Journal of the American Philosophical Association, The Monist, Erkenntnis, Synthese, and the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.

Mark's first book, Character as Moral Fiction, argues that the challenge to virtue ethics spearheaded by John Doris and Gilbert Harman should be co-opted, not resisted. His second monograph, Moral Psychology: An Introduction, was published by Polity Press in 2016. In more recent work, he has developed a multi-dimensional measure of intellectual humility. He is the editor of a series on The Moral Psychology of the Emotions, which include books on gratitude, sadness, regret, hope, admiration, guilt, curiosity, contempt, anger, disgust, pride, compassion, and forgiveness.