Karen Heimer

Professor of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Heimer is a professor of Sociology and Collegiate Fellow in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies and is an affiliate of the UI's Public Policy Center. Heimer researches and teaches in the areas of gender and violence, juvenile delinquency, criminal punishment, and causes of crime and violence. She currently is conducting research on the violent victimization of women and minorities, motherhood narratives of women in prison, gender differences in juvenile delinquency, and gender and race differences in patterns of incarceration in the US and Great Britain. She also is a principal investigator on a grant from the National Institute of Justice to implement and evaluate an intervention to reduce trauma, problem behaviors, and violence in an Iowa school district. Heimer's past work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Justice, and National Consortium on Violence Research. She served on the National Academies of Sciences' CNSTAT panel on Estimating the Incidence of Rape and Sexual Assault. Heimer was elected Fellow of the American Society of Criminology in 2015. She is a recipient of the 2018 Iowa Regents Award for Faculty Excellence, and was the 2018 University of Iowa Presidential Speaker. She is the 2018 President of the American Society of Criminology.