Amy Allen (born 1970) is an American liberal arts research professor of philosophy and women's, gender, and sexuality studies at The Pennsylvania State University, where she is also head of department.
[2] She has sat on the executive committee of the eastern division of the American Philosophical Association, and has been an executive co-director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, a co-editor-in-chief of Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, and editor of the series New Directions in Critical Theory published by Columbia University Press.
[1][5] Allen's second book built on the foundations of her first, attempting to bridge the gap between Foucaultian and Habermasian critical theory.
[1][6] Her third attends to a critique of the oft-called fourth generation of the Frankfurt School Critical Theory, based on its continued usage of concepts such as progress and development.
[7] Allen challenges what she sees as eurocentrism in the work of theorists such as Axel Honneth, Rainer Forst and Jürgen Habermas and proposes a revision of the tenets of Critical Theory in light of Postcolonial Studies and Decolonial Thought.