Karyn Sporer

Dr. Sporer earned her BA at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont, her MS in criminal justice at Northeastern University, and her PhD in criminology and criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Dr. Sporer’s main research interests are in the areas of family violence and victimization, mental illness and violence, and violent extremism and terrorism. Her work has been published in various journals, like the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict: Pathways toward Terrorism and Violent Extremism, the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Southern Communication Journal, and the Journal of Family Violence. Her most recent work focuses on justifications for mass casualty violence used by Islamic State members and sympathizers with the hopes that we can appropriately confront the threat of jihadi-based and lone wolf violence in the west. Aside from this, Dr. Sporer’s primary research agenda addresses violence and victimization among persons with severe mental illness. She was the recipient of both the 2018 Rose B. Johnson Southern Communication Journal Article of the Year Award and the 2016 Graduate Student Paper of the Year Award from Division of Victimology of the American Society of Criminology for her extensive research on family members of violent persons with mental illness.