Biography
I joined the Sociology Department at LSU in 2013 after receiving my Ph.D. in Sociology
from the University at Albany. Prior to joining the faculty at LSU I was a Research
Scientist at the Center for Human Services Research, which is part of the School of
Social Welfare at the University at Albany, where I was involved in evaluations of
efforts to reform local education and juvenile justice practices. My primary research
interests join the criminological and urban sociological literatures to explore the
geographic and social contexts in which crime occurs. At present, I have published
research on crime in the context of college campuses and high schools in the Journal
of Criminal Justiceand Youth & Society respectively. Additionally, I am a co-author
on a forthcoming paper in Law & Society Review that explored the association of deportation
and violent crime.
Much of my recent scholarly attention focuses on projects that will advance the study
of the association of gentrification and crime. A few of these projects include the
development of an innovative operationalization of gentrification that uses census
data and information collected from news sources, a temporal and spatial analysis
of the relationship between gentrification and crime in New York City between 1980
and 2009, and an examination of how cultural changes associated with gentrification
may result in elevated rates of neighborhood crime.
Education
PhD: University at Albany, State University of New York, 2013