Jennifer Lackey

Jennifer Lackey is the Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law (courtesy) at Northwestern University. She directs the Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP), which provides bachelor's degree education to incarcerated students across Illinois. She earned her Ph.D. from Brown University in 2000. Her research specializes in epistemology with emphases on social epistemology, legal epistemology, and applied epistemology, particularly examining false confessions, epistemic injustice, group epistemology, and the criminal justice system.

Her research interests include: epistemic reparations, the right to be known, testimonial injustice, epistemology of punishment, collective epistemology, and disagreement. She leads a $300,000 grant project on 'epistemic reparations' aiming to expand UN human rights frameworks.

Her scholarly publications consistently focus on social epistemology applied to legal systems, with recent work examining testimonial injustice in criminal contexts, epistemic agency in eyewitness testimony, and the ethics of group assertion. Her articles demonstrate sustained engagement with how knowledge systems operate within institutional power structures.

Major awards include:

• Horace Mann Medal from Brown University (2023)
• Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz Prize (2014-2015)
• ACLS Ryskamp Fellowship (2007-2008)
• Young Epistemologist Prize (2005)
• Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar Grant (2014-2015)

As founding director of NPEP, she oversees a program serving 100 incarcerated students. Her prison education work has been featured in TEDx talks, The Washington Post, and NPR. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of Episteme, Editor of Philosophical Studies, and Subject Editor for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.