I am an Assistant Professor of Criminology at the University of Maryland. My research focuses on the short- and long-term effects of what happens within prison walls. I am currently working on projects related to prison climate, peers in prison, and the impact of prison-based programming on post-release employment. I am also interested in the overlap between systems of crime and immigration control, and have published on the impact of a local-federal immigration enforcement partnership on police behavior. I have a broader interest in using evaluation methods to better understand other important crime policy questions. 

I earned my doctoral degree in Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, and subsequently held a SSRC Criminal Justice Innovation Postdoctoral Fellowship. I am a proud alumna of University College Utrecht and Cambridge University. I was born and raised in the Netherlands, and lived in Turkey, Uganda, and the UK before moving to the US. I previously managed a large scale peer support program in prisons in the UK and Ireland. I also served as an independent monitor of two immigration removal centers.