Joe L. Frost Award for Distinguished Research
The Joe L. Frost Award for Distinguished Research is given annually in recognition of a body of exceptional research that has enhanced and expanded the study of play.
Dr. Joe L. Frost, Ed.D, L.H.D., was one of America’s leading experts on play and playgrounds and has a global reputation as the contemporary father of play advocacy. He is the Parker Centennial Professor Emeritus at The University of Texas at Austin with a passion for children’s play and play spaces.
Frost was influential in the creation of the U.S. Play Coalition, serving as a steering committee member since the coalition’s beginning in 2009. He served as moderator that year at the coalition’s first conference – then called the Summit on the Value of Play –and has been an honorary chair for each successive play conference.
Previous Joe L. Frost Award for Distinguished Research Recipients:
2022 – Debora Wisneski, PhD, Professor and John T. Langan Community Chair in Early Childhood Education in the Teacher Education Department at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. She is also past president of The Association for the Study of Play (TASP).
2021 – Robin C. Moore, Director, Natural Learning Initiative, NC State University, an urban designer and design researcher, specializing in child and family urban environments that support healthy human development, informal play, and non-formal education.
2020 – Stuart Brown, M.D., founder and president of the National Institute for Play and nationally renowned author, consultant and play expert. Dr. Brown’s book: Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul has been translated into twelve languages.
2019 – Lynn A. Barnett, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Recreation, Sport & Tourism at the University of Illinois and Fellow in the Academy of Leisure Sciences.
2018 – Olga Jarrett, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of early childhood/science education at Georgia State University, evaluator of an NSF project in Belize, and a past president of The Association for the Study of Play and the American Association for the Child’s Right to Play.
2017 – The inaugural Joe L. Frost Award for Distinguished Research was presented to its namesake – Joe L. Frost, Ed. D., the contemporary father of play advocacy.
Learn more about the 2021 Joe Frost Research Award