scholar. researcher. activist.
Brooklynn K. Hitchens, Ph.D. an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, College Park in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. She is sociologist and urban ethnographer who specializes in race, class and gender inequities in crime and victimization, urban violence and trauma, and policing.
Her work centers the marginalized experiences of urban, street-identified Black women and girls, particularly those with personal and vicarious experiences with victimization, and those who are "homicide survivors," or have experienced the loss of a loved one to homicide.
She is a community-engaged researcher who uses an innovative methodological framework called Street Participatory Action Research (Street PAR). This method shifts the location of power in the research paradigm by including members of the population under study in each phase of the research process. This framework equips her with the skillset needed to engage marginalized communities while producing rigorous, evidence-driven scholarship.
Dr. Hitchens is an Affiliate Scholar for the Rockefeller Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium.
Her work has been published in Social Science & Medicine, Preventive Medicine, Journal of Marriage & Family, Sociological Forum, Race & Justice, Feminist Criminology, Journal of Black Psychology, and multiple edited book volumes.
Recognitions for this scholarship include funding and awards from the American Sociological Association (ASA), American Society of Criminology (ASC), Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS), and the American Association of University Women (AAUW).
