Positions: Professor and Senior Research Fellow, College of Criminal Justice, Northeastern University; Affiliated Faculty Member, Law, Policy and Society Program, Northeastern University.
I began my professional life as an English teacher (high school and college levels), switching to Criminal Justice only in my mid-thirties, at which point I earned my Ph.D. from the School of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York, Albany. I wrote one of the school's first historical dissertations and then, in 1977, began teaching at Northeastern University's College of Criminal Justice, where I developed one of the country's first courses on women and crime and, later, one of the first courses on crime films.
After twenty years of teaching, during which I was tenured and eventually promoted to Full Professor, I resigned from full-time teaching to give more attention to writing projects. At that point, I became an Adjunct Professor in Northeastern's Law, Policy, and Society program where I worked with several dissertation students but did not teach regular courses. In Fall 2002, I resumed teaching at the College of Criminal Justice with a regular graduate course in Biological Theories of Crime.
Awards and Honors: In 2005-06, I was a Visiting Scholar at Oxford University, affiliated with Wolfson College and the Centre for Sociolegal Studies, Oxford; in 2004, I was a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at St. John’s College, Oxford. Earlier (2001), I was a Resident Research Fellow at the Study Center of Liguria (Bogliasco Foundation). In 2010, I will be serving as Fulbright Distinquished Professor at Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria.
I was elected to be a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology (2000) and received the ASC's Sutherland Award (2009). My other awards include the 2009 ANZSOC Allen Austin Bartolemew award for Best Paper ("Criminology's Darkest Hour: Biocriminology in Nazi Germany," Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 41 (2): 287-306); Senior Scholar Award, Division on Women and Crime of the American Society of Criminology (1999); the American Association on Mental Retardation, Wilbur Founder’s Award (1999); and the Distinguished Alumni Award, State University of New York (1998).
Education: State University of New York, Albany: Ph.D., Criminal Justice, 1978; Harvard University: M.A.T., 1963; Swarthmore College: B.A., 1962.
I am married to the writer Robert Hahn (http://roberthahn.net). My son Alex Hahn is a writer and lawyer in Boston (http://hahnlawgroup.com); my daughter Sarah Hahn is a neuropsychologist in New York City.
