2010 GUEST SPEAKER

 

Charis E. Kubrin is Associate Professor of Sociology at George Washington University and Research Affiliate at the George Washington Institute of Public Policy. She is also a member of the National Consortium on Violence Research.

Charis’ research focuses on neighborhood correlates of crime, with an emphasis on race and violent crime. She studies the intersection of neighborhoods, race, and violence in order to bring attention to pressing social issues and as a means of clarifying and extending social disorganization theory, a theory that focuses on the effects of “kinds of places,” specifically different types of neighborhoods, in creating conditions favorable or unfavorable to crime.

A newer line of research examines the intersection of music, culture, and social identity, particularly as it applies to hip hop and minority youth in disadvantaged communities. Charis is especially interested in understanding how rap music affects youths’ perceptions and attitudes on topics ranging from crime and violence to racial and ethnic identity and gender relations, comparing youth from different racial, ethnic, class, and neighborhood backgrounds.

Her work has been published in various academic journals including American Journal of Sociology, City and Community, Criminology, Criminology & Public Policy, Homicide Studies, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Justice Quarterly, Men & Masculinities, Social Forces, Social Problems, Social Science Quarterly, Sociological Perspectives, Sociological Quarterly, and Urban Studies.

In addition to her work in peer-reviewed journals, Charis is co-editor of Crime and Society: Crime, 3rd Edition (Sage Publications 2007) and co-author of Researching Theories of Crime and Deviance (Oxford University Press 2008) and Privileged Places: Race, Residence, and the Structure of Opportunity (Lynne Rienner 2006).

In 2005, Charis received the American Society of Criminology’s Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award and the Morris Rosenberg Award for Recent Achievement from the District of Columbia Sociological Society.