On January 22, the Association of American Geographers (AAG) announced Ruth Wilson Gilmore as the winner of the 2014 Harold M. Rose Award, which honors scholars who lead social change. The prestigious award recognizes Gilmore for work in antiracism research and practice.

Gilmore is a professor of geography in the doctoral program in earth and environmental sciences at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is known as an activist, whose wide-ranging research interests include race and gender, labor and social movements, economic geography, and the African diaspora. AAG said: “[Her] career demonstrates a lifelong commitment towards asking how individuals employ power […] Gilmore is a mentor and an inspiration for many people.”

She is the author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (University of California Press, 2007), a critical account of how California’s political economy, social conditions, and “super-incarceration rates” established its industrialized and expensive prison system. The American Studies Association recognized Golden Gulag with its Lora Romero First Book Award. – See more at: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/News/GC-News/Detail?id=22897#sthash.6qmIDGbS.dpuf