Joan C. Tronto is professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of City University of New York and the University of Minnesota. She has written several publications on the ethics of care, including over 50 articles and various books, such as Moral Boundaries: a Political Argument for an Ethics of Care (Routledge, 1993) and Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality and Justice (published by NYU Press in 2013 and translated into Catalan by Raig Verd). In 2023, she received the Lippincott award for her relevant work in political theory from the American Political Science Association.

She received a Fullbright Scholarship in Italy and was awarded two PhD honoris causa from the University of Humanistic Studies in the Netherlands and the University of Lovaina in Belgium.  Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages.