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Tara D. Warner

Associate Professor; Director, Graduate Studies in Criminal Justice
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UBOB 216

Research and Teaching Interests:

• Victimization
• Health & Well-being
• Neighborhoods
• Adolescence & Emerging Adulthood 

Office Hours: T/Th 9:30 – 11:00am (Fall 2019)

• B.A., Louisiana State University, Sociology
• B.S., Louisiana State University, Psychology
• M.A., The Pennsylvania State University, Crime, Law, and Justice
• Ph.D., Bowling Green State University, Sociology

My scholarship lies at the intersection of victimology, health, life course sociology, and neighborhood stratification. As a sociological criminologist, my primary area of research extends principles of life course criminology beyond offending to focus on the processes, situations, and environments in which violent victimization and health-compromising deviant risk behaviors (substance use and sexual risk-taking, in particular) are embedded and unfold during adolescence and young adulthood. I pursue these lines of inquiry by examining two key developmental contexts: interpersonal/intimate relationships and neighborhoods, with attention to both the convergence of these contexts and the dynamic interplay between developmental contexts and individual lives.

In my research on relational contexts, I examine intimate partner violence, sexual victimization, and sexual risk-taking. I focus specifically on the consequences of youth violent victimization for later socioemotional and intimate relationship development. My research on neighborhoods recognizes these contexts as spaces in which victimization risks are concentrated, and in which deviant risk-taking behaviors may emerge—especially during adolescence and emerging adulthood. In work on neighborhood contexts, I focus on the psychological and behavioral consequences of neighborhood violence, and also seek to capture geographic variation in (and correlates of) deviant risk-taking that undermines health, development, and well-being.

I am currently developing a secondary line of research focused on the links between fear and protective gun ownership, gun use behaviors, and attitudes toward gun policy.

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