Ruth Wilson Gilmore (born April 2, 1950) is a prison abolitionist and prison scholar. She is the Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics and professor of geography in Earth and Environmental Sciences at The City University of New York. She has been credited with "more or less single-handedly" inventing the study of carceral geography, the “study of the interrelationships across space, institutions and political economy that shape and define modern incarceration.” She received the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Geographers.