Savannah Doherty is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University. Originally from Huntsville, Alabama, she earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Criminal Justice from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Her research broadly examines how experiences of adversity and victimization shape pathways into offending and justice system involvement across the life course.
Her primary research interests include adverse childhood experiences, youth victimization, juvenile justice, life-course criminology, gender and crime, the victim-offender overlap, and reentry and community supervision. Across these areas, she is particularly interested in understanding the intersection of individual experiences and broader social and structural contexts in shaping trajectories of victimization and offending. Her work draws on both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Her current research includes a latent class analysis examining patterns of adverse childhood experiences and their relationship to subsequent victimization, offending, and the victim-offender overlap. She is also involved in qualitative research examining how individuals make sense of responsibility, constraint, and experiences of community supervision following probation or parole revocation.
Her research has been published in Victims & Offenders and Deviant Behavior. Her published work has examined the theoretical processes linking childhood adversity to the victim-offender overlap and used qualitative synthesis to explore how individuals interpret and make meaning of victimization experiences. She has also presented her research at the Southern Criminal Justice Association Annual Meeting.
Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Savannah served as a graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Criminal Justice at UAB and as an intern with the Jefferson County Family Court. She currently serves as a graduate teaching assistant at Temple University and is involved in graduate student and professional service within the field.
Faculty Advisor: Matthew Hiller
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