Kathleen Knight Abowitz

At the March 2024 annual meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society (PES), Kathleen Knight Abowitz, professor at Miami University, was announced as president-elect. She will serve as president of the society in 2025-2026. She is honored to be tapped for leadership in this vibrant scholarly organization, in which she has served on the executive committee, program committee, and most recently, as editor of Groundworks. She is former president of the John Dewey Society and the Ohio Valley Philosophy of Education Society.

Working as a philosopher of democracy and education, Knight Abowitz is a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where she has previously served as department chair. Her philosophical work has addressed the publics of public education, themes of community and conflict in schooling, populism and educational governance, ethical leadership, charter schooling, and forms of citizenship. In her teaching and mentoring of teachers, administrators, and pre-service teachers at Miami University, she empowers students to investigate intersections between public education and democratic ideals of equity and freedom. Her present research explores themes of community, conflict, politics, and place as understood through the perspectives of diverse Ohio school board members. Knight-Abowitz served as an elected school board member in 2019-2023.

About the Philosophy of Education Society

Founded in 1940, the Philosophy of Education Society (PES) is an international forum that promotes the philosophic treatment of educational practice, policy and research, advances the quality of teaching the philosophy of education, and cultivates fruitful relationships between and among philosophers, philosophers of education and educators. The membership of PES comprises hundreds of faculty, graduate students, and other interested parties from around the globe. PES hosts an annual conference – dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly research related to philosophy of education – at various locations throughout North America.