Kathryn Gines, assistant professor of philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, has been named the inaugural winner of the American Philosophical Association’s Joyce Mitchell Cook Award, presented by the Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers (CSBP). Professor Gines works on Continental philosophy (especially existentialism and phenomenology), African American/Africana philosophy, black feminist philosophy, and critical philosophy of race. She is the founding director of the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers, one of the founding co-editors of the journal Critical Philosophy of Race, the founder of the Center for Balanced Living, and she directs a program called Cultivating Underrepresented Students in Philosophy (CUSP).

Joyce Mitchell Cook was the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. in Philosophy in the United States. You can learn more about her here.