RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP
Our department has nationally and internationally recognized scholars whose research addresses critical questions about society and the criminal justice system and has significant academic and policy impacts.
FACULTY SCHOLARSHIP
New faculty member Guillermo Jesús Escaño with coauthor William Alex Pridemore, PhD, published the article “Population-level alcohol consumption and homicide rates in Latin America: A fixed effects panel analysis, 1961–2019” in The British Journal of Criminology. They also wrote a blog post featuring the article for the Institute of Alcohol Studies.
New faculty member Lorena Ávila, PhD, with coauthor Sarah Tosh, PhD, published the article “The institutional hearing program and the incarceration-to-deportation pipeline” in Critical Criminology.
Glenn Bracey, PhD, along with coauthor Michael O. Emerson, PhD, published the book The Religion of Whiteness: How Racism Distorts Christian Faith.
Brian Jones, PhD, published the book The Pursuit of Happiness in America: A Sociological Perspective.
Max Osborn, PhD, was interviewed by Teen Vogue for the article “Brandon Teena was failed by the American legal system and the media” about anti-trans violence.
Lorena Ávila, PhD, focuses on the role of law and legal bureaucracies in propelling inequalities through the immigration system. Her research aims to give visibility to the experiences, resources, and challenges of migrant families and migrant’s rights advocacy networks navigating inequality and racialization propelled by bureaucratic structures in place.
Tom Arvanites, PhD, is investigating the effect of residential segregation on the incarceration rate of African Americans for drug offenses.
Meredith Bergey, PhD, is working on a paper with Thomas Mackie, PhD, Giuseppina Chiri, PhD, and Nikki Freeman, PhD, that examines intersecting social identities and health inequalities.
Glenn Bracey’s, PhD, scholarship examines the intersection of race, social movements, and religion. Drawing on research conducted through the Race, Religion, and Justice Project (rrjp.org), Bracey’s current work explores whiteness as a religion and the implications of the religion of whiteness for Christians of color.
Rick Eckstein, PhD, is currently exploring the social class bias in non-revenue intercollegiate sports. He recently appeared on the September episode of Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel (S29 E9) where he discusses special admissions for college athletes.
Guillermo Jesús Escaño (he/him), conducts research focusing on crime and violence in Latin America and the Caribbean, organized criminal groups, the structural and cultural causes and consequences of violence, and criminal justice policy (evidence-based practices). He is a quantitative researcher, mainly using panel and time series models.
Heidi Grundetjern, PhD, is currently conducting research focused on women's drug use utilizing a trauma-informed psychosocial perspective.
Lance Hannon, PhD, is currently working on a variety of sociological and criminological research projects utilizing digital text analysis tools.
Melissa Hodges, PhD, is currently working on a project that examines the relationship between the structural arrangements of care systems and variation in the distribution of economic inequality across gender, race, and class cross-nationally.
Brian J. Jones, PhD, is writing a book for Palgrave Macmillan entitled The Pursuit of Happiness in America.
Rory Kramer, PhD, is finishing work on a book manuscript about diversity within the Black student body at selective colleges and universities with colleagues at Penn and Princeton. He is also working on a related paper on the impact of racial disparities in exposure to stressful events on college completion rates.
Jill MCCorkel, PhD, is writing a book manuscript about gender and mass incarceration that examines the long term incarceration of women who are survivors of gender violence. She is also collaborating with the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office on a grant to explore the relationship between prosecutorial charging decisions and increases in women's incarceration rates. In 2022, Dr. McCorkel received the Distinguished Service Award from the American Society of Criminology Division of Corrections and Sentencing for the contributions of her non-profit organization, The Philadelphia Justice Project for Women & Girls. In 2023, Dr. McCorkel served as the co-chair of the Annual Meetings of the American Society of Criminology.
Max Osborn, PhD, is examining how LGBTQIA+ people navigate risk, safety, and gender presentation during encounters with institutional actors such as police and service providers. He is also studying representations of transgender victims of violence in the news media.
Allison Ann Payne, PhD, is collaborating with our department’s research associate, Denise Wilson, on a multilevel study examining the influence of school-related risk and protective factors on traditional and cyberbullying.
Brianna Remster, PhD, and Melissa Hodges, PhD, are investigating the incarceration-wage penalty for women compared to men.
Ken Sun, PhD, is currently working on two manuscripts, including a single-authored book on aging and migration, and the other on transnational social protection (with Professors Peggy Levitt, Erica Dobb, and Ruxandra Paul).
Kelly Welch, PhD, is editing the Research Handbook on Race, Crime, and Justice. The handbook is under contract with Edward Elgar Publishing.
Emerson, Michael and Glenn Bracey. (2024). The Religion of Whiteness. How Racism Distorts Christian Faith. Oxford University Press.
Jones, Brian. (2024). The Pursuit of Happiness in America. A Sociological Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan.
Levitt, Peggy, Erica Dobbs, Ken Chih-Yan Sun, and Ruxandra Paul. (2023). Transnational Social Protection. Oxford University Press.
Charles, Camille Z., Massey, Douglas S., Torres, Kimberly C., & Kramer, Rory. (2022). Young, Gifted and Diverse: Origins of the New Black Elite. Princeton University Press.
Sun, Ken Chih-Yan. (2021). Time and Migration: How Long-Term Taiwanese Migrants Negotiate Later Life. Cornell University Press.
Jones, Brian. (2019). Social Capital in American Life. Palgrave Macmillan.
Bergey, Meredith R., Angela M. Filipe, Peter Conrad, and Ilina Singh (Eds.) (2018). Global Perspectives on ADHD. Social Dimensions of Diagnosis and Treatment in Sixteen Countries. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ávila, Lorena and Sarah Tosh. (2024). The institutional hearing program and the incarceration-to-deportation pipeline. Critical Criminology.
Ávila, Lorena and David Ibañez. (2023). An expensive pass to freedom: Bond amounts trajectories in immigration court. American Behavioral Scientist.
Rengifo, Andres F., Lorena Ávila, and David Ibañez. (2023). Criminal defense work in a sample of arrest hearings in three states of Mexico: The micro-dynamics of case-level engagement, influence, and strategy. Crime, Law and Social Change, 79(5), 555-580.
Bergey, Meredith. (2024). Medicalization in global context: Current insights, pressing questions, and future directions through the case of ADHD. Sociology Compass.
Bergey, Meredith. (2024). “Pills don’t teach skills”: ADHD coaching, identity work, and the push toward the liminal medicalization of ADHD. Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
Chiri, Giuseppina, Meredith Bergey, and Thomas Mackie. (2022). Deserving but not entitled: The social construction of autism spectrum disorder in federal policy. Social Science and Medicine, 301.
Bergey, Meredith, Giuseppina Chiri, Nikki Freeman, and Thomas I. Mackie. (2022). Mapping mental health inequalities: The intersecting effects of gender, race, class, and ethnicity on ADHD diagnosis. Sociology of Health and Illness.
Bracey, Glenn. (2022). The spirit of Critical Race Theory. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 8(4), 431-570.
Bracey, Glenn and Reverend Renee McKenzie-Hayward. (2022). Resistance in sacred spaces. In A. Rodriguez, C. Barry, and A. Armenta (Eds.), The Road to Sanctuary: Insights from the City of Sisterly Affection and Brotherly Love.
Escaño, Guillermo Jesús and William Alex Pridemore. (2024). Population-level alcohol consumption and homicide rates in Latin America: A fixed effects panel analysis, 1961–2019. The British Journal of Criminology, 64(3), 656-674.
Escaño, Guillermo Jesús. (2024). Latin American homicide. In K. Burgason & M. DeLisi. (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Homicide Studies (pp. 41-64). Routledge.
Escaño, Guillermo Jesús. (2023). Region-specific structural covariates of homicide rates in Latin America: State legitimacy and remittances. Justice Quarterly, 1-34.
Grundetjern, Heidi. (2022). A decade of change in the gendered organizational structure of methamphetamine markets in the American Midwest. The British Journal of Criminology.
Grundetjern, Heidi and Alessandra Milagros Early (2022). The role of sex and compulsory heterosexuality within the rural methamphetamine market. Crime & Delinquency.
Hannon, Lance, Lindsay Redditt, and Brooke Cordes. (2024). Curbing pretextual traffic stops to reduce racial profiling. Agenda for Social Justice 3 Solutions for 2024.
Hannon, Lance and Meredith Bergey. (2024). Policy variation in the external evaluation of research for tenure at U.S. universities. Research Evaluation.
Kramer, Rory and Brianna Remster. (2022). The slow violence of contemporary policing. Annual Review of Criminology, 5.
McCorkel, Jill, Paisley Hahn, and Isabella Balian. (2024). Parenting from prison. Graterfriends.
Osborn, Max, Tanyanne Ball, and Valli Rajah. (2024). Peer support work in the context of intimate partner violence: A scoping review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse
Moore, B., Max Osborn, and C. DeJong. (in press). Consequences and considerations of “free speech” in higher education: Validating trans and non-binary identities in the classroom setting. Journal of Criminal Justice Education. doi:10.1080/10511253.2024.2378453.
Osborn, Max. (2023). “Something could happen to you at any moment”: Safety, strategy, and solidarity among trans and nonbinary protesters against police violence. Critical Criminology.
DeJong, Christina, Max Osborn, and Harnoor Kaur. (2023). Trans panic: The representation of trans women as murder victims in true crime podcasts. In A. E. Goldberg, D. C. Slakoff, and C. L. Buist (Eds.), The (Mis) Representation of Queer Lives in True Crime (pp. 160-182).
Osborn, Max. (2023). Difficult, deceptive, and dangerous: Portrayals of victimized transgender men in crime news coverage. In A. E. Goldberg, D. C. Slakoff, and C. L. Buist (Eds.), The (Mis) Representation of Queer Lives in True Crime (pp. 183-201).
Osborn, Max (2022). LGBTQIA+ people’s service access during the COVID-19 pandemic: Obstacles to care and provider adaptations. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services.
Osborn, Max (2022). U.S. news coverage of transgender victims of fatal violence: An exploratory content analysis. Violence Against Women, 28(9), 2033-2056.
Osborn, Max (2022). “Nobody ever correctly recognizes me”: Nonbinary presentation, visibility, and safety across contexts. In V. Demos and M. T. Segal (Eds.), Advances in Gender Research: Gender Visibility & Erasure, 33, 51-69.
Payne, Allison Ann (2024). Reducing school crime and student misbehavior: An evidence-based analysis. In B. Welsh, S. Zane, and D. Mears (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Evidence-Based Crime and Justice Policy.
Payne, Allison Ann and Kelly Welch. (2023). Minority threat in schools and differential security manifestations: Examining unequal control, surveillance, and protection. Crime & Delinquency.
Payne, Allison Ann and Kelly Welch (2022). Transforming school climate and student discipline: The restorative justice promise for peace. In G. Velez and T. Gavrielides (Eds.), Restorative Justice: Promoting Peace and Wellbeing.
Wilson, Denise, Kirsten L. Witherup and Allison Ann Payne. (2022). prevention and intervention programs for bullying perpetration and victimization. In C. Donoghue (Ed.), The Sociology of Bullying.
Remster, Brianna, Chris M. Smith, and Rory Kramer. (2022). Race, gender, and police violence in the shadow of controlling images. Social Problems.
Sun, Ken Chih-Yan and Baiyu Su. (2023). “Who should care for our parents?” How the perceived achievement hierarchy complicates transnational family relations in China? International Migration Review.
Sun, Ken Chih-Yan and Nicole Newendorp. (2023). How age and life stage of relocation fosters social belonging: Comparing two groups of older migrants in the United States. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B.
Welch, Kelly and Allison Ann Payne (forthcoming). Unequal “in”security: How differential school security approaches discriminate against students of color. In A. Eizadirad and P. P. Trifonas (Eds.), Handbook of Anti-Discriminatory Education.
Welch, Kelly, Peter S. Lehmann, Cecilia Chouhy and Ted Chiricos. (2022). Cumulative racial and ethnic disparities along the school-to-prison pipeline. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency.
STUDENT SPOTLIGHT
Cory Goldstein '25 CLAS, Kate Malnak '25 CLAS, Ella Doda '25 CLAS, and Akintade Asalu '25 CLAS
Twenty-five Sociology and Criminology majors and minors attended the American Society of Criminology annual conference held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in November 2023. Criminology major Cory Goldstein '25 CLAS reflects on his experience attending the ASC Conference.
The 78th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) took place in Philadelphia, PA this past November, offering an opportunity for Villanova sociology and criminology majors and minors to attend panel discussions and research presentations on topics of their interest. As a junior, double majoring in criminology and statistics, I had the privilege of witnessing some of the field’s leading academics and researchers discuss their recent findings, theories, and hypotheses.
Fortunately, the Villanova Department of Sociology and Criminology funded student attendance at the conference, ensuring that no barriers hindered our access to this invaluable educational opportunity. During the four-day conference, I attended several presentations covering a range of topics, from residential segregation and police killings to gender issues in prosecutorial discretion, the effects of adverse childhood experiences on school shootings, and the analysis and innovation of white supremacist humor. Each presentation included a discussion of the research, relevant theory application, overarching themes, and a Q & A session. Engaging with leading academics and researchers, discussing their findings, and posing questions was an enriching experience that fully immersed us in the world of research, offering limitless opportunities to learn and explore.
Initially, I contemplated the idea of attending law school after graduation, however, my passion for academia, research, and crime data analysis has led me to pursue PhD programs. As I embark on the PhD program application process, I find myself reflecting on the experiences I gained at ASC. Witnessing some of the world's foremost academic minds compile years of data, conduct research, formulate hypotheses, and develop new theories has been both inspiring and motivating.
As I commence my second semester as a junior at Villanova, I grapple with a sense of uncertainty about the future, yet I also find solace in the experiences gained at ASC. It provided me with an unparalleled opportunity to delve into the world of research and immerse myself fully, if only for a brief period. Hopefully, this serves as the initial step in what promises to be a long and fulfilling journey in my research career.
Paisley Hahn '24 CLAS, mentored by Allison Ann Payne, PhD, published the article "Measuring Juvenile Justice Outcomes for Restorative Justice Diversion Programs" in Veritas: Villanova Research Journal.