About Dr. Eric Madfis

Eric Madfis, Ph.D., is a Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Washington Tacoma, where his research focuses on the causes and prevention of school violence, hate crime, and mass murder.  He also serves as Director of the Violence Prevention and Transformation Research Collaborative. As a recognized expert on school and mass shootings, he has spoken to audiences across the country and around the world about his research, including to the United States Congress and the Washington State Legislature.  He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Northeastern University in Boston, where he was a Research Associate at the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict.  He often teaches courses on Criminological Theory, Sociology of Deviance and Social Control, Criminal Homicide, Juvenile Justice, and Diversity and Social Justice. 

His work has been published in Aggression and Violent Behavior, American Behavioral Scientist, Behavioral Sciences & the Law, Critical Criminology, Homicide Studies, The Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, The Journal of Hate Studies, The Journal of Psychology, Men and Masculinities, School Psychology Review, Social Justice, The Social Science Journal, Sociological Focus, Sociological Inquiry, Violence and Gender, Youth Violence & Juvenile Justice, and in numerous edited volumes.  He served as co-editor (along with Dr. Adam Lankford) of the February 2018 special issue of American Behavioral Scientist on "Media Coverage of Mass Killers."  His most recent monograph, How to Stop School Rampage Killing: Lessons from Averted Mass Shootings and Bombings, explores how threats of multiple-victim rampage shootings are assessed and prevented in American public schools.  He also just published a new edited volume entitled All-American Massacre: The Tragic Role of American Culture and Society in Mass Shootings which examines why mass shootings occur so much more frequently in the United States than anywhere else.

As a prominent public criminologist, Dr. Madfis has been interviewed by and/or has had his research featured on ABC News, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, NPR, The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, Live Science, The Los Angeles Times, Money Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Newsweek, Politico, Psychology Today, Salon, The Seattle Times, Slate, Time, Vice, The Washington Post, and many other local, national, and international outlets.  In 2018, he won UW Tacoma's Distinguished Research Award.  In 2019, the Washington State Legislature utilized his research on the prevention of mass school shootings to inform the passage of a legislative mandate implementing non-biased threat assessment procedures in public schools across Washington state.

View his CV here.