Welcome! My name is Rebecca Stone. I am currently an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts.
I have more than a decade of experience designing and conducting qualitative and mixed-methods research on criminal justice and public health topics. My primary research agenda concerns the intersection of justice and health, particularly for women and gender-expansive people. This has included the intersection of substance use and intimate partner violence, substance use during pregnancy and the negative consequences of criminalization, and women’s experiences on probation and parole. I have an additional interest in storytelling, narratives, and communication. For example, I have studied how police shootings are covered by online news sites, the impact of labeling and framing on public support for overdose prevention sites, and how people craft redemption narratives to resist stigmatization. I have also served as a methodological and subject area consultant on multiple projects, including a study of drivers of probation revocation and several analyses of incident-based crime data from Michigan.
I am passionate about doing interdisciplinary research that has real-world impact and advances equity and social justice. I am an alumna of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders fellowship, a 3-year grant program through which my interdisciplinary team conducted community-engaged research and collaborated with community partners to develop and evaluate a cross-training curriculum for community-based victim advocates and peer recovery coaches. Together with colleagues from a variety of disciplines and support from the National Science Foundation, I conduct science communication training workshops for early-career researchers. I am a member of the Women & Incarceration Project, an organization of scholars, attorneys, social workers and community organizers working to raise awareness of the harms of women’s incarceration. In 2022, I received the ASC Division of Feminist Criminology Community-Engaged Scholar Award.
Please use the navigation links to learn more about my research, teaching, and service work.