Alison Duncan Kerr is a feminist philosopher, whose research focuses on emotion theory and the many ways in which emotions contribute to our overall rationality. Kerr also has research interests in gender, love and sex, logic, and artificial intelligence. 

Prior to starting at the Philosophy Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in Autumn 2023, Kerr worked at The Work Inclusion Project, where she contributed to groundbreaking equality work in Higher Education. Prior to that, Kerr was the Founding Director of The St Andrews Institute for Gender Studies and its related Master's Programme, as a Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews.
 
Kerr received her PhD from The Ohio State University, writing a dissertation entitled “Affective Rationality” under the supervision of Professor Justin D’Arms (chair), and Professor William Cunningham, Professor Richard Samuels, and Professor Sigrún Svavarsdóttir. Before that, she received her MA from University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, writing a thesis entitled “Beyond the Meaning of ‘Meaning’: Rigidity and Semantic Externalism.” And, before that she spent two years at the University of Oregon and then transferred and got her undergraduate degree from Smith College.