Biography

I am a full professor in Community Development and Planning at Clark University’s
department of Sustainability and Social Justice. I bring expertise in developing and supporting long-term community-university partnerships that address the social determinants of youth violence. The intractability of youth violence requires horizontal knowledge and strategy production (i.e. responses that are co-created by individuals and communities affected by violence, staff at the frontlines, and institutional actors with decision-making authority and control over resources). My primary aim is to support these differently situated stakeholders to create and review local data and scholarly research and to deliberate over what the data reveal about structural racism and structural violence in order to foster system and policy change. As the university-based research partner on the city’s youth violence prevention and intervention efforts, I work closely with city officials, the public schools, police, and community-based organizations. Starting in 2015, I have been meeting weekly with these actors to keep efforts aligned through the Worcester Youth Violence Prevention Initiative. This consistent contact has generated a sense of trust and understanding across sectors, which has led to inter-agency data sharing. Specifically, the police, schools, and city manager's office share data with me on a monthly basis. With these data, I maintain an internal data dashboard of key indicators. This cross-sector work allows for the identification of emerging trends and persistent gaps and to pursue grants and other resources to address the trends and gaps. For example, my collaborative research approach supported Worcester in its successful Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Comprehensive Anti-Gang Strategies grant (2016-2018) and its Department of Justice Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation Program grant (2014-2018). I served as the research partner on both grants. I have been the Principal Investigator on the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety funded Security Charles E. Shannon Community Safety Initiative which has supported me to serve as Worcester’s Local Action Research Partner since 2006. The overarching contribution of my work is about how to be a research partner committed to transformational community change in the area of youth violence prevention and reduction. I incorporate this work into my graduate level program evaluation, community needs assessment, and practicum courses; students in these classes partner with community organizations and individuals with lived experience of community violence to co-construct knowledge that informs decision-making and action.