Faculty

Professor Botchkovar earned her Ph.D. in sociology from North Carolina State University. Her interests include empirical testing of criminological theories, comparative criminology, and theory construction. Specifically, her research seeks to assess how well contemporary criminological theories explain crime in various cultural contexts.

With data from Russia, Ukraine, and Greece, she has conducted multiple studies investigating causes of criminal/deviant behavior on an individual level. In her most recent work, she attempts to determine how the conjunction of individual- and neighborhood-level factors influences criminal behavior of individuals in Russia and Ukraine. Professor Botchkovar’s work has been published in journals such as Criminology, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Social Forces, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and Social Science Research.

Professor Bruell’s research and scholarship focuses on evaluation research, intersectionality and the criminal justice system, and the role of social support in criminal offending. Formerly, he held a position with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, working in the Research and Policy Division of the Office of Grants and Research. In that role, he was involved in a study looking at the recidivism of sex offenders in Massachusetts and Maine and contributed to the evaluation of Massachusetts’ Homeland Security Strategic Plan. In addition, he managed data related to sexual assaults in the Commonwealth and was a member of the state’s Statistical Analysis Center.

Molly Buchanan has over 20 years of experience in various academic and non-academic roles across the fields of youth and adult justice. She earned her PhD in Criminology, Law, and Society from the University of Florida after early professional experiences led her to seek more advanced theoretical and quantitative training. Her research is broadly categorized as an epidemiological, life course view of consequences of criminal legal system involvement, with aims to inform the evidence base.

Dr. Patrice Collins earned her PhD in Sociology from Yale University in 2022. Her research is situated at the intersection of urban sociology, race and ethnicity, social justice, parental incarceration, and child well-being.

Professor Cuevas received his B.A. from Tufts University and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant International University in San Diego, CA. He is currently co-director of the Violence and Justice Research Laboratory. Professor Cuevas’ research interests are in the areas of victimization and trauma, sexual violence and sexual offending, family violence, and psychological assessment. Specifically, his work focuses examining victimization among Latinos and how it relates to psychological distress and service utilization, as well as the role cultural factors play on victimization. In addition, he is studying the impact of psychological factors on the revictimization of children and how it helps explain the connection between victimization and delinquency. His most recent National Institute of Justice-funded research will examine the scope and impact of bias crime against Latinos. Other NIJ-funded collaborations include the development of instruments to evaluate bias victimization among youth and teen dating aggression. Professor Cuevas also continues to engage in clinical work, providing assessment and treatment to victims of abuse and trauma as well as sex offenders.

Megan Denver is assistant professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. She received her Ph.D. in criminal justice from the University at Albany and a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Delaware. Professor Denver was a 2016 National Institute of Justice Graduate Research Fellow and previously worked as a research associate at the Urban Institute.

Professor Denver’s research interests include criminal record stigma, employment and recidivism, credentialing decisions for people with criminal records, and desistance. She uses a variety of methods to address her research questions and integrates criminological theory with policy.

Professor Drakulich’s recent work addresses three interrelated questions. The first question concerns social processes related to crime and its consequences across space—and in particular across neighborhoods and communities. A second line of research builds on the first by asking how people view crime, disorder, and social control processes within their community. Finally, a third line of research follows this line of thought beyond neighborhoods, examining how people view crime, control, and related policies more broadly, and how these views impact political behavior. Underlying all three of these lines of research are two overarching themes: race and racism, and interpersonal interactions and relationships.

Professor Drakulich received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Washington, where he studied deviance and social control, as well as methodology through his association with the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences. He is a 2014 recipient of the National Institute of Justice’s W.E.B. Du Bois Fellowship as well as the 2014 New Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology’s Division of People of Color and Crime. In 2016 the students of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice awarded him the Robert Sheehan Excellence in Teaching Award.

Professor Farrell is a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University and the director of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. She is also the co-director of the Violence and Justice Research Laboratory, housed within the Institute on Race and Justice at Northeastern University. She joined the tenure track faculty in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice in 2008. Prior to that time, she served as the assistant director of the Institute on Race and Justice and a faculty researcher at Northeastern University.

Professor Farrell’s research is aimed at understanding and describing how the criminal justice system administers justice. Over the past decade she has focused much of her scholarly attention on understanding how the criminal justice system responds to the newly prioritized crimes such as human trafficking. In support of this research, she has studied and published research about how local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies identify, investigate, and prosecute human trafficking cases. Additionally, she has completed research projects examining labor trafficking victimization of both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals residing in the U.S. She also has conducted numerous studies examining how changes in state and federal human trafficking laws impact the identification and prosecution of human trafficking offenders. As part of this body of work, Professor Farrell has sought to understand how the public views the problem of human trafficking and what responses they expect from state and federal governments to address the problem. Professor Farrell has overseen the development of programs to collect data on human trafficking investigations for the Bureau of Justice Statistics and she has developed a data collection system to track children identified as human trafficking victims in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She testified about police identification of human trafficking before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. She was also appointed to the Massachusetts Attorneys General Human Trafficking Policy Task Force where she oversaw a committee that developed recommendations for improving the collection and sharing of data on human trafficking victims in the Commonwealth. She currently serves on the Governor’s Working Group on Child Trafficking in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

In addition to studying criminal justice system responses to human trafficking victimization, Professor Farrell has examined how variable levels of racial group and gender representation among court workgroups relate to district-level differences in sentencing. She has been engaged in research examining how jury outcomes, particularly the factors that predict and explain acquittals. She is the co-author of two books. The first, co-authored with Daniel Givelber, Not Guilty: Are the Acquitted Innocent? was published by New York University Press in 2012. Deadly injustice: Trayvon Martin, Race, and the Criminal Justice System, co-edited with Devon Johnson and Patricia Warren, was published by New York University Press in 2015. Professor Farrell was a co-recipient of NIJ’s W.E.B. DuBois Fellowship on crime justice and culture in 2006, a recipient of the American Society Criminology Mentor of the Year in 2014 and a recipient of NIJ’s Graduate Research Fellowship in 1999.

James Alan Fox is the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy at Northeastern University. He has written 18 books, including The Will to Kill, Extreme Killing, Violence and Security on Campus, and his newest, Randomized Response and Related Methods. He has published dozens of journal and magazine articles and hundreds of freelance columns in newspapers around the country, primarily in the areas of multiple murder, youth crime, school and campus violence, workplace violence, and capital punishment. In addition, as a member of its Board of Contributors, his column appears regularly in USA Today. Fox often gives keynote talks on campuses and to professional or community groups, as well as testimony before Congress and in court. He has presented to various leaders here and abroad, including President Clinton, Attorneys General Reno and Holder, and Princess Anne of Great Britain.

Professor Fox has worked on criminal investigations surrounding serial and mass murder cases and served for several years as a visiting fellow with the Bureau of Justice Statistics focusing on homicide patterns and trends. He was also the founding editor of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology. Fox was honored in 2007 by the Massachusetts Committee against the Death Penalty with the Hugo Adam Bedau Award for excellence in capital punishment scholarship and by Northeastern University with the 2008 Klein Lectureship.

Natasha Frost is a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice with primary research and teaching interests in the area of punishment and social control. Specifically, she is interested in mass incarceration and the effects of incarceration on individuals, families, and communities. Professor Frost often works with nonprofits and state/local agencies on issues related to her scholarly interests and involves both undergraduate and graduate students in those projects. Since arriving at Northeastern in 2005, she has completed an assessment of state-level variations in punitiveness towards women for the Women’s Prison Association in New York, served as a consultant for the Massachusetts State Parole Board, worked collaboratively with the Massachusetts Department of Correction, and conducted correctional program assessment and recidivism studies for several Massachusetts counties. More recently she has been awarded federal funding to study the effects of mass incarceration on the community and on the well-being of those who work in correctional settings.

Professor Frost recently completed a study of the impact of incarceration on crime in communities funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and is currently conducting NIJ-funded research on correctional officer wellbeing. Her book, The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America, co-authored with Todd R. Clear was published in 2014 by NYU Press. Other publications have appeared in Justice Quarterly, Criminology & Public Policy, Punishment & Society, Crime, Law and Social Change, and Studies in Law, Politics, and Society.

Professor Frost holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Northeastern University (1997) and a Ph.D. in criminal justice from the City University of New York’s Graduate School and University Center (2004). She was elected to the executive board of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) and served as executive officer from 2014-2017. She also serves as chair of the ASC’s Division on Corrections and Sentencing.

Jack R. Greene is recognized as one of the country’s leading scholars in the field of policing. Greene has published six books; a two-volume Encyclopedia of Police Science; and over 100 research articles, book chapters, research reports, and policy papers on matters of U.S. and international policing. With Brian Forst and James Lynch, he co-edited Criminologists on Terrorism (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Dr. Greene has consulted for police and governmental agencies and other major organizations throughout his career, including the Philadelphia and Los Angeles Police Departments, the Justice Department, the National Institute of Justice, the Urban Institute, and the RAND Corporation. He currently serves on the research advisory committees of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Police Foundation and is a fellow of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. For nine years, he was a commissioner on the Commission for the Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA).

Dr. Greene has written widely on matters of police service delivery, crime prevention, and police management, especially in terms of community approaches to policing. Recently, his research focus has shifted to the strategic and practical problems that police face in community building, preserving human rights, and adapting to their new security role in an era of terrorism. He now writes on terrorism, human rights, and the social and legal complexity of police interventions.

Katherine completed a PhD in the Law-Psychology Program at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 2021 and earned a JD with a concentration in constitutional law from the University of Nebraska College of Law in 2018. Katherine has diverse experience in teaching criminal justice and psychology courses and in evaluating police, lawyer, and case manager professional training programs and trauma-informed justice-system interventions, including specialty courts.

Roderick L. Ireland is Distinguished Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Lincoln University, Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, Master of Laws from Harvard Law School, and Doctor of Philosophy in Law, Policy, and Society from Northeastern University.

He began his legal career in 1969 as a Neighborhood Legal Services attorney. In 1971 he founded, along with attorney Wallace Sherwood (who later taught at the SCCJ for 35 years), the Roxbury Defenders Committee, a public defender program that provided free legal services in criminal cases. In 1975 he was appointed the assistant secretary and chief legal counsel for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Administration and Finance, and in 1977, the chair of the Massachusetts Board of Appeals on Motor Vehicle Liability Policies and Bonds. He then served as a judge for 37 years, sitting in the Boston Juvenile Court from 1977 to 1990, the Massachusetts Appeals Court from 1990 to 1997, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1997 to 2014. When he was appointed an associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court in 1997, he became the first African-American to sit on that bench in its over 300-year history. In 2010 he became the Court’s first African-American chief justice.

Ireland served as an adjunct faculty member in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (formerly the College of Criminal Justice) from 1978 to 2014. He also taught at Harvard Law School, Boston University Law School, Northeastern University School of Law, and the University of Massachusetts in Boston. In addition, he has been on the faculty of New York University Law School’s Appellate Judges Seminar since 2001. He is the author of a two-volume treatise on Massachusetts juvenile law published by Thomson/Reuters in its Massachusetts Practice Series (the first edition was published in 1993 and the second edition in 2006), as well as several law review articles.

As one of the four justices who voted in favor of same-sex marriage in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (2003), the nation’s very first case in which a state supreme court declared same-sex marriage constitutional, he has lectured and spoken on that topic a number of times, including giving the Sixteenth Annual Justice William J. Brennan Jr. Lecture on State Courts and Social Justice at New York University School of Law entitled, “In Goodridge’s Wake: Reflections on the Political, Public and Personal Repercussions of the Massachusetts Same-Sex Marriage Cases.”

Ireland has received many honors and awards, including honorary degrees from a number of colleges and law schools, the Community Hero Award (2016) from Community Resources for Justice, the Judicial Excellence Award from the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys (2015); the Celebration of Excellence Award from the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association and the Massachusetts Black Judges Conference (2015); Lifetime Achievement Award from the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association (2015); the Boston Bar Association’s Judicial Excellence Award (2014); the Boston NAACP’s Thurgood Marshall Award for Lifetime Achievement (2014); the Massachusetts Judge’s Association President’s Award for Judicial Excellence (2013); the Great Friend of Justice Award from the Massachusetts Bar Foundation (2008); the Judicial Excellence Award from the Massachusetts Bar Association and Lawyers Weekly Newspaper (2001); the Judicial Excellence Award from the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys (1999); the St. Thomas More Award from Boston College Law School (1998); the Judicial Excellence Award from the Massachusetts Judges Conference (1996); the Distinguished Judicial Service Award from the Boston Bar Association (1990); and the Boston Covenant Peace Prize (1982).

His interests include criminal law, juvenile law, and constitutional law. Of particular interest, given his experience as chief justice of the SJC, is studying both the theory and the reality of how government works, with a focus on the interplay of the judiciary with the legislative and executive branches, as well as with external entities such as the business community and the media. He is also very interested in diversifying the judiciary at all levels through increased training programs, as well as scholarship and fellowship opportunities for minorities, and is president of The Justice George Lewis Ruffin Society, sponsored by Northeastern University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. The Ruffin Society is an organization that supports and uplifts minority professionals in the criminal justice system and the legal profession in general.

In 2017 Chief Justice Ireland was asked by the Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the Honorable Robert DeLeo, to be his personal policy advisor on issues related to criminal justice reform.

Norair received a BA in psychology from the University of Cincinnati before completing an MA and PhD in criminology at the University of South Florida. Since 2017, he has taught a variety of courses, including Criminology, Introduction to Criminal Justice, Serial Murder, Organized Crime, and Abnormal Behavior. He has also authored and co-authored 12 articles and several book chapters in the areas of homicide offender subtypes, prisoner reentry, and hate crimes.

Attorney Krista M. Larsen joined Northeastern as an adjunct professor in 2007 and is now an assistant professor. Her teaching focus is the “Due Process” course, which focuses on the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments.

Larsen was recognized by CSSH in 2016 when she was awarded the Outstanding Teaching Award in the Part-Time category. She also received the CJ Robert Sheehan Award for excellence in teaching in 2013, 2016, and 2017.

Attorney Larsen specializes in criminal defense while maintaining her general practice. In 2003, she was followed by The Boston Globe for an article reporting on funding for court appointed attorneys. In 2005, she was named one of Massachusetts’ Super Lawyers.

Professor Marshall has a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. She holds degrees from Tilburg University (the Netherlands), the College of William and Mary (USA), and Bowling Green State University. She has been a professor at Youngstown State University (1977-1980), the University of Nebraska-Omaha (1980-2005), and a visiting professor at the Faculty of Law at Catholic University Leuven (Belgium). She serves on the editorial board of several international and national journals and has served as the American Society of Criminology Lead Liaison to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (2005-2011).

Professor Marshall specializes in comparative and international criminology and crime policy, migration and crime, self-report methodology, juvenile delinquency, and criminal careers. Her current research focuses on cross-national surveys of juvenile delinquency and comparative examination of homicide. Professor Marshall is the chair of the Steering Committee of the International Self-Report Study of Delinquency (ISRD), an international collaborative study with participants from countries all over the globe. She recently received a grant–together with Ekatarina Botchkovar–from NSF to conduct an expanded version of the ISRD project in the US (together with colleagues from Germany, UK, France and the Netherlands).

Ramiro Martínez, Jr. is a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Professor Martinez is a quantitative criminologist. Within that broad arena, his work contributes to violent crime research. His core research agenda asks how violence varies across ecological settings and whether violent crime and deaths vary across racial/ethnic and immigrant groups.

He and his collaborators assembled a multi-city team of researchers including graduate and undergraduate students to collect violence data directly from police departments and medical examiner offices in places including cities on or by the U.S./Mexico border (San Diego, San Antonio) and Miami, Florida to answer these questions. This agenda has been funded through the NSF, NIH, NIDA, NIJ, and The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

Professor Martinez has received several honors and awards. In 2011, he was a recipient of American Society of Criminology DPCC’s Lifetime Achievement for outstanding scholarship in the area of race, crime, and justice. He was also honored by his alma mater (formerly known as Southwest Texas State University) in 2009 with the Texas State University College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award and the Texas State Alumni Association’s Alumni Achievement Award. In 2007 he was a recipient of American Society of Criminology DPCC’s Coramae Richey Mann Award for outstanding scholarship in the area of race, crime, and justice. In 2006 he was a recipient of the Florida International University Faculty Award for Excellence in Research and a Visiting Scholar, Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Houston. He previously received the American Sociological Association Latinao Section Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research and a W.E.B. DuBois Fellowship from the National Institute of Justice. Since 2004 he has been a member of the National Science Foundation funded Racial Democracy, Crime and Justice-Network working group at The Ohio State University. At the national level, Martinez serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals and recently completed a three-year term as a member of the Sociology Advisory Panel at the National Science Foundation. He publishes in sociology, criminology, criminal justice, and ethnic studies journals.

Jack McDevitt is the director of Northeastern’s Institute on Race and Justice. He is also professor of the practice in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. McDevitt is the co-author of three books: Hate Crimes: The Rising Tide of Bigotry and Bloodshed, Hate Crime Revisited: American War on Those Who Are Different (both with Jack Levin), and Victimology (with Judy Sgarzy). He has spoken on hate crime, racial profiling, human trafficking, and security both nationally and internationally. He has testified as an expert witness before the Judiciary Committees of both U.S. Senate and The U.S. House of Representatives and as invited expert at the White House. In January 2013, McDevitt was appointed by Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo to lead a special commission on gun violence.

Cassie McMillan’s research applies a social networks perspective to disentangle how our connections both reproduce and challenge systems of social inequality. She is interested in developing statistical and computational methodologies that can better address these questions and in applying these techniques to study adolescent delinquency, health, and immigration. In a research project funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, she is currently examining how network ties that persist from adolescence to adulthood shape trajectories of tobacco, alcohol, and substance use across the life course. Results from this work will uncover new insight about the ways social network structures inform disparities in substance misuse and recovery. Other recent projects consider how normative school transitions impact youth friendship and crime, as well as the connection between adolescents’ networks and their experiences with bullying and interpersonal aggression.

Daniel Medwed’s research interests and pro bono activities revolve primarily around the topic of wrongful convictions. Professor Medwed is an official legal analyst for WGBH News, Boston’s local NPR and PBS affiliate.

Dan O’Brien is associate professor in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, and co-director of the Boston Area Research Initiative. His work focuses on the ways that researchers, policymakers, and practitioners can work together to leverage modern digital data (i.e., “Big Data”) to better understand and serve cities. His own work focuses on the behavioral and social dynamics of urban neighborhoods, particularly those that directly impact a place’s future upward (or downward) trajectory.

Nikos Passas is professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University, and co-director of the Institute for Security and Public Policy. He is also visiting professor at the Basel Institute on Governance; visiting professor at Vienna University of Applied Sciences for Management & Communications Center for Corporate Governance & Business Ethics; distinguished visiting professor at Beijing Normal University; professor, distinguished practitioner in financial integrity, and senior fellow of the Financial Integrity Institute at Case Western Reserve Law School; head of UN Sanctions Implementation Legal Review Services at Compliance Capacity and Skills International (CCSI), and chair of the Academic Council of the Anti-Corruption Academy in India. He received a 2017 Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from Tufts University’s Institute on Global Leadership.

His law degree is from the University of Athens (LL.B.), his master’s from the University of Paris-Paris II (D.E.A.), and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh Faculty of Law. He is a member of the Athens Bar (Greece). He is fluent in six languages and plays classical guitar.

He specializes in the study of corruption, illicit financial/trade flows, sanctions, informal fund transfers, remittances, terrorism, white-collar crime, financial regulation, organized crime, and international crimes. He has published more than 220 articles, book chapters, reports and books in 14 languages. His next book is entitled Trade-Based Financial Crime and Illicit Flows.

He serves as editor-in-chief of the international journal Crime, Law and Social Change and associate editor for a number of journals. He served as chair of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) International Division and as ASC’s liaison to the United Nations. He also served on the board of directors of the International Society of Criminology.

Passas offers training to law enforcement, intelligence and private sector officials on regulatory and financial crime subjects. He regularly serves as expert witness in court cases or public hearings and consults with law firms, financial institutions, private security and consulting companies and various organizations, including the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), OECD, OSCE, the IMF, the World Bank, other multilateral and bilateral institutions, the United Nations (ODC, Development Programme, Security Council, etc.), the Caribbean FATF, the European Union, the US National Academy of Sciences, research institutions and government agencies in all continents. His work with UNODC includes the design and initiation of the legal library of UNCAC-related national texts and the design and content of the UNCAC review mechanism software and checklist.

He served as team leader for a European Union Commission project on the control of proliferation/WMD finance. His current projects focus on anti-corruption authorities, the development of performance indicators for the assessment of anti-corruption, integrity and accountability in several countries, corruption and procurement regulation, trade-facilitated financial crime, the regulation of remittance flows in cash-based societies, and on use of IT for the enhancement of due diligence conducted by financial institutions. He organized the launch and coordinated a global interdisciplinary academic initiative on anti-corruption courses and materials, supported by Northeastern University, UNODC, OECD, and the International Bar Association to reach out to universities and educational institutions around the world. He has been an INSPIRE Fellow at Tufts University’s Institute of Global Leadership, consortium member and Distinguished Inaugural Professor of Collective Action, Business Ethics and Compliance at the International Anti-Corruption Academy, distinguished visiting fellow at the TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, and corruption program director at the Ethics and Compliance Officer Association (ECOA).

Glenn Pierce has conducted research on a broad range of social and economic issues and has obtained funding for his research from a variety of agencies, including the National Institute of Justice; the National Institute of Mental Health; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the National Science Foundation; and the Department of Homeland Security. His most recent research has focused on firearms violence, counter-proliferation of dual-use technologies and weapons of mass destruction, criminal justice information and intelligence systems, the death penalty, and intergroup conflict. Pierce has more than 50 professional journal and law review articles and major reports. At Northeastern University, Pierce has also served as Director of Strategic Planning and Research for Information Services, Director of Academic Computing, and Director for the Center Applied Social Research. As Director of Academic Computing he was one of the leaders that implemented Northeastern University’s institution-wide computer network, the development of a centralized computer support services, and the university-wide delivery of software applications and other network services.

Dr. Piza’s research agenda focuses on the spatial analysis of crime patterns, evidence-based policing, crime control technology, and the integration of academic research and police practice. In support of his research, Dr. Piza has received over $3.7 million in outside research grants, including awards from the National Institute of Justice, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the U.S. Department of State, the Swedish National Council on Crime Prevention, and the Charles Koch Foundation’s Policing & Criminal Justice Reform program.

Dr. Piza has been a featured speaker at conferences and seminars for government agencies around the world, including the U.S. Department of Justice, the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, the Carabineros De Chile (The National Police Force of Chile), and the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Dr. Piza has published three books and over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles.

Before entering academia, Piza served as the GIS Specialist of the Newark, NJ Police Department, responsible for the day-to-day crime analysis and program evaluation activities of the agency. He received his PhD from Rutgers University.

Professor Singer’s scholarship focuses on adolescent offender and juvenile justice. His most recent book, America’s Safest City: Delinquency and Modernity in Suburbia (New York University Press, 2014), won the American Society of Criminology’s 2015 Michael J. Hindelang Book Award for the most valuable contribution to research in criminology. His earlier book, Recriminalizing Delinquency: Violent Juvenile Crime and Juvenile Justice Reform (Cambridge University Press, 1996), won the American Sociological Association’s 1999 Albert J. Reiss Distinguished Scholar Award in crime, law, and deviance. He has received grants from the National Institute of Justice and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. His current book project is on juvenile lifers in America’s criminal justice system.

The research interests of Professor St. Louis include police and technology, police-community relations, and surveillance. He uses quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods to address his research questions.

Professor St. Louis recently served as the manager of an evaluation of the Chicago Police Department’s Body-Worn Camera program, a project funded by the U.S. Department of Justice. His current research examines officer attitudes toward body-worn cameras (BWCs) in the Chicago Police Department.

Professor Stowell received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University at Albany-SUNY. Stowell is originally from California, where he received his BA in sociology from California State University, San Marcos. His research interests are guided by two general themes: communities and crime. More specifically, he is interested in the variations in patterns of violence across immigrant and non-immigrant neighborhoods. Most recently, his research has involved the use of tract-level data collected for a number of U.S. cities to test the question of whether immigration is associated with high levels of lethal and non-lethal violence, as theories of crime expect. Stowell is currently involved in additional research projects with Ramiro Martinez which examine both the spatial and temporal aspects of the immigrant/crime link. Professor Stowell’s methodological interests include mapping, spatial analysis and structural, equation modeling. His teaching interests include statistics, research methods, and communities and crime.

Brandon C. Welsh, Ph.D., is a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University and the director of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study. His research and teaching focuses on the prevention of delinquency and crime, with an emphasis on developmental, community, and situational approaches and evidence-based social policy. Professor Welsh is an author or editor of 10 books, including Experimental Criminology: Prospects for Advancing Science and Public Policy (Cambridge University Press), The Oxford Handbook of Crime Prevention (Oxford University Press), and The Future of Criminology (Oxford University Press). He was a member of the NIJ Study Group on Transitions from Juvenile Delinquency to Adult Crime and the OJJDP Study Group on Very Young Offenders. He has served as a consultant to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the British Home Office, Canada’s National Crime Prevention Centre, and the International Centre for the Prevention of Crime in Montreal.

Gregory M. Zimmerman is the master’s program director and associate professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. He was recently appointed as the director of Big Data and Quantitative Methods Initiatives within the College of Social Sciences and Humanities. Professor Zimmerman’s record combines strong commitment to graduate education with leading research on the spatial distribution of crime. His scholarship examines the intersection of psychological risk factors for violent offending and familial, peer, and neighborhood ecologies.

Zimmerman has authored over 50 scholarly articles. With colleagues and graduate students, he has published peer-reviewed articles in top criminology and criminal justice journals such as Criminology, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, and Justice Quarterly. The interdisciplinary nature of Professor Zimmerman’s work has also led to publications in sociology, public health, medical, and psychology journals, including American Sociological Review, American Journal of Public Health, JAMA, Social Science and Medicine, and Journal of Youth and Adolescence. He has also published numerous book chapters and has been invited to speak at national conferences. He is currently serving as an editorial board member for several journals in the social sciences and on the executive committee for the Division of Communities and Place in the American Society of Criminology.

As an affiliated researcher of the Center on Crime and Community Resilience in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Professor Zimmerman has served as co-principal investigator on projects funded externally by a variety of grant-making institutions including Arnold Ventures, the City of Boston and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the City of Oakland, California. His role in these projects has focused primarily on the spatial distribution of violent crime, law enforcement responses to violence, and the development of new tools to fight the opioid epidemic.

Professor Zimmerman holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the University at Albany, SUNY. He earned his Ph.D. in 2009 and has since worked at Northeastern. While at Northeastern, Dr. Zimmerman has demonstrated strong commitment to the experiential liberal arts, online education, diversity and inclusion, and interdisciplinary social sciences and humanities. He received a Curriculum Innovation Grant from the College of Social Sciences and Humanities for his work developing the Experiential Master’s Degree Program, and he developed the online master’s program in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Zimmerman has sought to increase the diversity of students who pursue graduate education through recruitment efforts and active participation in VIEW Northeastern. He has also served on the Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Sciences and Humanities Course Development Committee and the College of Social Sciences and Humanities Standing Committee on Digital Proficiencies and Quantitative Methods. He teaches at the graduate and the undergraduate levels in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, as well as master’s and doctoral level courses in the Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Sciences and Humanities (INSH) sequence.