About the Authors

John R. Barner, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Social Work and Director of Practicum at Troy University in Troy, Alabama. He received his Ph.D. in Social Work from the University of Georgia and a Masters of Social Work and undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on the forensic and legal aspects of social work policy and practice including the impact of jury instructions and judicial procedure on imposition of the death penalty, the theoretical study of crime and deviance in American society and the history, and the prevalence and etiology of intimate partner violence. Additionally, Dr. Barner has written, presented, and published across many topics pertinent to social work and social psychology, including grief and loss issues, labor and social welfare policy, globalization, immigration, and the sociology of popular culture.

Rebecca L. Brock, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Iowa. She earned her undergraduate degree in psychology from North Dakota State University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Iowa. Dr. Brock’s research is focused on the etiology and treatment of depression and anxiety, the role of interpersonal processes in the development and maintenance of internalizing disorders, and factors impacting satisfaction and stability in intimate relationships. She has published dozens of articles in peer-reviewed journals, and has received numerous awards for her research, including a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from NIMH, the Steve Duck New Scholars Award from the International Association for Relationship Research, and the American Psychological Association Dissertation Research Award. She has also served on the executive board and numerous subcommittees for the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology (Division 12, Section 3, of APA).

Deborah Capaldi, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist at the Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene, Oregon. Her Ph.D. is in Developmental Psychology, from the University of Oregon. Her research focuses on antisocial and co-occurring behaviors across the early life span within a dynamic developmental-contextual framework. Foci include explaining developmental trajectories of such behaviors (e.g., crime, health-risking sexual behaviors, substance use), including the dispositional, contextual, familial, peer and romantic partner influences on their emergence, persistence, and desistance. One current study focuses on the transmission of these behaviors across three generations. A further focus is on understanding the formation and stability/instability of romantic relationships in early adulthood, and particularly on explaining the development of aggression in such relationships.  She is currently the Principal Investigator of two studies funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). One examines young at-risk couples’ relationships, and the third study examines intergenerational influences on risk with a prospective three-generational design.

Dr. Capaldi is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Family Psychology, Child Development, Journal of Marriage and Family and the Journal of Adolescence. She has served on numerous grant review committees. She is the author of many journal articles and book chapters. In 1998 she was awarded the Boyd McCandless Award for scientific achievement in early career from American Psychological Association, Division 7. She is a member of a number of professional societies and a regular participant at meeting symposia, as well as speaking at NIH conferences. In October 2004, she was an invited speaker at the NIH State-of-the-Science Conference on Preventing Violence and Related Health-Risking Social Behaviors in Adolescents. In December 2007 she was co-chair of the conference on Teen Dating Violence: Developing a Research Agenda to Meet Practice Needs (NIH, NIJ, CDC), Arlington, VA.

Michelle Mohr Carney, Ph.D, Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and Director of The Institute for Nonprofit Organizations at the University of Georgia, received the Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 1996, the MSSA from Case Western Reserve University in 1989, and the BSSW from The Ohio State University in 1988.   Her primary research interests and expertise are in the areas of intimate partner violence, batterer interventions and program evaluation.  She has conducted numerous evaluation studies primarily in the area of service provision for male and female batterers.  Dr. Carney co-edited the book Women Who Perpetrate Relationship Violence: Moving beyond Political Correctness and has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on issues related to female and male perpetrators.  Her publications address the need to better understand the prevalence and characteristics of intimate partner abuse and to promote better treatment interventions through client-treatment matching and developing researcher-agency partnerships. Dr. Carney teaches courses in nonprofit management, advanced community practice and evaluation research each year, and is a member of the Graduate Faculty.

Melissa Cowart  received a B.A. in Sociology from Berry College in 2007.  Upon graduating, Melissa worked for the GA Department of Family and Children Services as a case manager in the Investigations Unit.  In this capacity, she met with families to address allegations of child abuse and neglect, including families in which intimate partner violence was an issue.  In the Fall of 2010, Melissa began pursuing a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree at Georgia State University. She joined the National SafeCare Training & Research Center at GSU as a project coordinator in August 2011 and continues to work toward an MPH.

Patrick Davies, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology at the University of Rochester. Dr. Davies is broadly concerned with understanding relationships between family processes, child coping and adaptation to stress, and child psychological adjustment and maladjustment. He received his Ph.D. in 1995 and is an author of over 80 publications in the field of developmental psychology and psychopathology. Dr. Davies has served on the editorial boards of several developmental and clinical psychology journals and as an associate editor of Developmental Psychology and Development and Psychopathology. He is a recipient of the Boyd McCandless Early Career Award for Significant Contributions to Developmental Psychology, American Psychological Association, Division 7 (Developmental) Award, the University of Rochester Georgen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Education, and the Reuben Hill Research and Theory Award from the National Council on Family Relations. His research is currently funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Mental Health

Sarah L. Desmarais, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy and the Department of Community and Family Health at the University of South Florida. Dr. Desmarais received her Bachelor of Arts (Honors) degree in Psychology from the University of Guelph, followed by Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Forensic Psychology from Simon Fraser University. She then completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, where she trained concurrently as a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the Department of Psychology.

Dr. Desmarais’ program of research examines issues related to mental illness, substance use, and violence in criminal justice and health care settings. She is currently focused on the development, validation, and implementation of evidence-based practices for the prevention of adverse outcomes among mentally disordered offenders and victims of partner violence. In 2008, Dr. Desmarais received the Alice Wilson Award from the Royal Society of Canada and the Postdoctoral Prize from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for her research examining the effectiveness of partner violence interventions in improving health outcomes among pregnant women.

Dr. Desmarais is a trainer and co-author of the Short-Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability (START; Webster et al., 2004, 2009). With her START co-authors, Dr. Desmarais has trained mental health and legal professionals worldwide. She provides online consulting to researchers, clinicians, and administrators who have implemented START in their services and is first author of the START Instructors’ Guide and Workbook (Desmarais et al., 2007). Dr. Desmarais is also actively engaged in community service, including serving on the Hillsborough County Domestic Violence Fatality Review Committee and the Family Justice Center of Hillsborough County’s Child Welfare/Domestic Violence Policy Group’s Steering Committee.

Rita E. Dykstra, Ph.D.is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Dykstra received her BA from the Pennsylvania State University (2002) and both her M.S. (2008) and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Purdue University (2011). She completed her pre-doctoral internship at the University of Mississippi Medical Center/Sonny (G.V.) Montgomery VA Medical Center consortium. Dr. Dykstra’s research has focused on investigating risk factors for intimate partner violence, especially the role of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder in the perpetration of violence.

Christopher Eckhardt, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN. Dr. Eckhardt received his BA from the University of Michigan (1989) and his Ph.D. in Clinical/School Psychology from Hofstra University (1994). Prior to coming to Purdue, he was on the faculties of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX and the Univ. of North Carolina –Wilmington. Dr. Eckhardt’s research has investigated risk factors for intimate partner violence as well as factors that may predict successful/unsuccessful treatment outcomes among men assigned to partner violence abatement programs. His research has examined whether men who abuse their partners exhibit cognitive disturbances and intense emotional states (such as anger arousal problems) during emotionally charged relationship conflicts, including those that involve alcohol intoxication. A second line of research has investigated the relation between readiness to change and outcomes of treatment programs for abusive offenders. Dr. Eckhardt has published more than 40 scientific articles and books/book chapters on intimate partner violence, which has been supported by research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the H.F. Guggenheim Foundation, Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation, National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, US Department of Justice, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Esteban E. Esquivel-Santoveña, BSc is a PhD candidate  at the Centre for Forensic and Criminological Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.  He has a BSc in Psychology from the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México-UAEM, and has worked as a research assistant at UAEM in a project (“Clinical Psychology of the Vital Cycle”) investigating different health aspects related to individual and family life of users of healthcare services with Drs. Patricia Balcázar Nava and Gloria Margarita Gurrola before undertaking his PhD under the supervision of Dr. Louise Dixon at the University of Birmingham.
His research has focused on how attitudes and other salient partner violence risk factors impact on young dating relationships. Recently he has  specifically investigated how certain mental health correlates (such as depression, PTSD, psychological flooding, etc.) and other proximal variables (attitudes about aggression, relationship adjustment, jealousy, etc.) relate to different types of aggressive and/or controlling behavior in men and women (e.g. Johnson’s typology) in dating relationships. Esteban believes that professionals working in prevention and treatment of partner violence can benefit from insights derived from empirically-tested typological approaches to tailor prevention and treatments efforts targeting specific kinds of victims and perpetrators.

Martin S. Fiebert, Ph.D., received his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Rochester in 1965.  He has been a member of the faculty at California State University, Long Beach since 1965.  He is current a full professor and teaches courses in the areas of Clinical Psychology, Counseling, Family Therapy and Personality.  He has published over 45 articles in professional journals and has focused on such topics as friendship, meditation, male victimization, and intrracial dating.  His widely cited annotated bibliography, “References examining assaults by women on their male partners” has been recently updated and published in Sexuality & Culture.

Joel H. Garner, Ph.D,  received his doctoral degree in political science from The George Washington University. For the past 30 years, his primary research interests have been the effectiveness of criminal justice responses to intimate partner violence, police use of force, racial profiling, experimental designs, and alternative methods of research synthesis. He served as the program manager for the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment, Director of Research at the U.S. Sentencing Commission and at the Joint Centers for Justice Studies, Inc.  Dr. Garner is currently serving as Chief of Law Enforcement Statistics for the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Ed Hilterman is a Sociologist , director of a small Consultancy specialized in applied research in the justice sector in Barcelona, Spain and Consultant at the Open University in Barcelona, Spain.
Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Chijs van Nieuwenhuizen, from Tilburg University, he is currently working on his PhD on risk assessment in juvenile offenders.
In both the Netherlands and in Spain he has worked in the area of risk assessment and risk management. In the Netherlands he has worked as researcher in the TBS system and in Spain in the juvenile justice system in Catalonia. Since 2008 he has had his own Consultancy in Barcelona.
He has specialized in risk assessment and has translated several risk assessment tools into Dutch and Spanish. In collaboration with Tonia Nicholls and Anders Tengström he also worked on the development of the Decision-making in Abusive Relationship Interview (DIARI), a structured needs assessment tool for victims of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV).

Amanda E. Hodges completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology at Georgia State University in 2009. Her research as an undergraduate focused on assessing the prevalence of problem gambling behaviors among youth and adult offenders in Georgia’s juvenile and drug/DUI courts. In 2011, she earned a Master of Public Health degree from GSU where she focused on prevention science. Her research integrated nursing and neuroscience to examine the health impact of sleep disorders.  During Amanda’s tenure in graduate school, she worked as a graduate assistant within the National SafeCare® Training and Research Center. Upon graduation in 2011, she joined NSTRC as a research coordinator.

Hyoun K. Kim, Ph.D. is a research scientist at Oregon Social Learning Center. Dr. Kim received her Ph.D. in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at the Ohio State University in 1999. Her research interests center on the development of psychopathology – including depression, delinquency, drug use, health-risking sexual behavior, and intimate partner violence – in adolescents and young adults from at-risk backgrounds. Dr. Kim’s work has focused on understanding the developmental trajectories of these health-risk behaviors from early adolescence through young adulthood, with a strong focus on mediating effects of self-regulatory systems and social influence processes on the development of health-risking behaviors. She has been working on multiple longitudinal studies on health-risk behaviors of at-risk adolescent populations, including two long-term longitudinal studies of at-risk young men and their romantic partners (Oregon Youth Study and OYS-Couples Study), in which the effects of romantic relationships on the developmental pathways of psychopathology have been examined. She is an author on over 50 publications and has been serving on the editorial board of the Journal of Marriage and Family for the past 2 years.

Naomi Knoble is a doctoral student in Counseling Psychology at the University of Oregon. Ms. Knoble earned a M.Ed. in Couples and Family Therapy from the University of Oregon in 2005. She is currently a predoctoral research fellow (funded through NIMH) at the Child and Family Center at the University of Oregon. Her research focuses on risk and protective factors for violence in family and romantic relationships.

Amie Langer, M.A. is a predoctoral researcher at the University of Iowa. She earned her undergraduate degree in psychology from Iowa State University and her M.A. in clinical psychology from the University of Iowa.  Ms. Langer’s research is focused on developing and testing empirically-supported interventions for emotional and behavioral dysregulation. With Dr. Lawrence and Ms. Orengo-Aguayo over past three years, Ms. Langer has been involved in developing an empirically-based intervention based on third-wave behavior therapies such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) aiming to reduce violent behaviors among men convicted of domestic assault.

Teri Lambert, M.A., is a member of the American Counselor’s Association and is currently the Mental Health Specialist for the Family Violence Council and the Southwestern Judicial District Court in Americus, Georgia.  Ms. Lambert began her work in the field of violence against women in 1999 as a volunteer advisory board member and president for the domestic violence shelter in Yuma, Arizona.  In 2001 she began working as the Domestic Violence Paralegal for the Yuma County Attorney’s Office.  She completed her Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice from Northern Arizona University – Yuma Branch Campus in 2003.  While working with the prosecutor’s office, Ms. Lambert coordinated a Dating/Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention Program for the local junior and senior high schools.  She also provided training in domestic violence response to local law enforcement agencies. In 2008-2009, Ms. Lambert was the Coordinator for the Arizona Western College/Northern Arizona University-Yuma Branch Campus Violence Prevention Program.  She then worked as Executive Director of the Arizona Sexual Assault Network.   Ms. Lambert received her Master’s in Community Counseling from NAU-Yuma in 2011, completing her practicum and internship at Catholic Community Services (CCS) emphasizing her studies in trauma counseling. Ms. Lambert was then hired as a counselor at CCS, counseling trauma victims and substance abuse clients.  Through her experience, Ms. Lambert has established herself as an expert in the area of domestic and sexual violence, including abuse against Native American women for which she produced a training video. She has spoken locally and nationally on domestic violence, addressing audiences including law enforcement agents, advocates, prosecutors and educators.

Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Ph.D., is a Psychology Professor at the University of South Alabama. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Brown University and her Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Clinical Psychology from the University of Oregon. She completed her clinical internship at the Palo Alto VA/Stanford Medical Center, and a two-year NIMH funded fellowship in marital violence at SUNY-Stony Brook. Her research focuses on gender, intimate partner violence, and at-risk adolescents. She has published over 70 empirical papers and book chapters on these topics in journals includingViolence and Victims, Journal of Family Violence, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Journal of Family Psychology, and Psychology of Women. For the past three years, she has been developing, implementing, and disseminating data on a domestic violence prevention/relationship enhancement program she designed called Building a Lasting Love. She has targeted the program toward high-risk pregnant teens and adjudicated male youth.

Erika Lawrence, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Iowa. For almost two decades, she has been conducting basic and applied research examining the nature, developmental course, predictors and consequences of intimate partner violence. Her interests are broad and comprehensive: she is interested in (a) both low-level aggression and battering violence, (b) in the context of aggression enacted by both men and women, (c) in the related trajectories and consequences of verbal, psychological/ emotional, physical and sexual aggression, and (d) in the impact of violence on perpetrators, victims, relationships, and children. Erika is in the process of developing a primary prevention program targeting intimate partner violence in young adults, and is revising the standard Batterers Education Program used across the state of Iowa.

Katie Watson MacDonell, M.A., completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology at the University of Guelph with a minor in Criminal Justice and Public Policy. She went on to complete her Master’s degree in Forensic Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Since December 2007 she has worked as a research assistant with Dr. Miriam Ehrensaft on the ‘Building Blocks: Teens and Young Adults Project’.  Data from the first wave of this project were utilized for her Master’s thesis, which explored the relationship between exposure to an antisocial father figure and attitudes toward intimate partner violence in preteens followed up 10 years after enrollment in a childhood intervention to prevent conduct disorder.  Presently, Ms. Watson MacDonell works as a clinical interviewer on the Teens and Young Adults project as well as completing manuscripts and conference presentations as part of Dr. Ehrensaft’s research lab.

In 2009, after completing her Master’s degree, Ms. Watson MacDonell was hired as Dr. Cathy Spatz Widom’s full-time research assistant, working on her longitudinal data set that explores the long term effects of childhood maltreatment. Ms. Watson MacDonell has worked on a variety of grant applications, manuscripts and presentations, as well as having the opportunity to complete her own research. She is currently working on a manuscript exploring resilience, based on 7 domains of functioning, across three assessments in middle adulthood utilizing Dr. Widom’s sample. She recently presented this study at the American Society of Criminology in November 2010 and will submit the manuscript for publication this spring. Ms. Watson MacDonell recently applied to go back to school to complete her PhD in Clinical Psychology.

Christopher D. Maxwell, Ph.D. is Associate Dean for Research in the College of Social Science and Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University (MSU), and he is Associate Research Scientist in the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan.  He holds bachelor’s degrees in sociology, criminal justice and psychology from Indiana University-Bloomington, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in criminal justice from Rutgers University. Dr. Maxwell’s research interests include testing for the benefits and costs of sanctions and therapeutic treatments for spouse abusers, the impacts of police and court services on victims of domestic violence, the epidemiology of violence against women by intimates, and the extent and correlates of sexual assault by and against adolescents. His current focus is assessing the extent to which intimate partner violence offenders are prosecuted and whether more prosecution and sanctions lead to less subsequently violence. He has published numerous articles in journals, including Criminology, Criminology and Public Policy, Justice Quarterly, and Journal of Quantitative Criminology.

Adrianne McCullars, M.S. received a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2008. After college, Ms. McCullars was employed as a Psychologist Assistant for the UAB Department of Neurology Division of Neuropsychology. In this position, Ms. McCullars was promoted to Program Coordinator of an NIH funded study titled, Medical Decision-Making Capacity in Traumatic Brain Injury (RECLAIMED). Ms. McCullars obtained her Master of Science degree in Applied Psychology from the University of South Alabama in May 2012. During her graduate training, Ms. McCullars served as a research assistant under the mentorship of Dr. Langhinrichsen-Rohling. Ms. McCullar’s research interests include adjudicated juvenile youth, intimate partner violence, and suicide related behaviors (suicide ideation, suicide attempt, and non-suicidal self-harm). Ms. McCullars is currently a doctoral student in the Combined-Integrated Clinical Counseling Program at the University of South Alabama.

Tiffany Misra, M.S. is a 4th year doctoral student in the Combined-Integrated Clinical Counseling Program at the University of South Alabama and is expected to graduate in 2013. Ms. Misra earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia and her M.S. in Applied Psychology from the University of South Alabama. Before pursuing graduate training, Ms. Misra worked in the public health field predominantly with non-profit mental health organizations. While Ms. Misra has worked on research projects that include a variety of topics, currently her specific research interests are in the areas of intimate partner violence, nonsuicidal self-injurious behaviors, and issues concerning social justice. Ms. Misra has been conducting research with Dr. Langhinrichsen-Rohling for 5 years. Ms and her Master’s Thesis investigated the perceptions of dating violence by comparing attributions of responsibility within the context of victim-committed sexual versus emotional infidelity. For her dissertation, she is investigating the Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicidal Behavior among self-injurers, specifically concentrating on the characteristics of self-injury that may increase an individual’s acquired capability for suicide.

Christopher Murphy, Ph.D. is Professor and Director of Clinical Training in the Department of Psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  He received his B.A. in Psychology at the University of New Hampshire and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Stony Brook University. His research focuses on the efficacy of cognitive – behavioral and motivational treatments for perpetrators of intimate partner abuse, the role of alcohol and drugs in partner abuse, motivation to change abusive behavior, and psychological abuse in dating and marital relationships. Dr. Murphy directs the New Behaviors Program for partner violent men at the Domestic Violence Center of Howard County, Maryland, where he is actively involved in clinical training and supervision.  Dr. Murphy has over 50 publications, including the 2005 book, Treating the Abusive Partner: An Individualized, Cognitive-Behavioral Approach (co-authored with Christopher Eckhardt).

Dr. Tonia Nicholls obtained a Ph.D. with a specialization in Law and Forensic Psychology from Simon Fraser University in 2002. She is Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia and Senior Research Fellow at the Forensic Psychiatric Services Commission, BC Mental Health & Addiction Services.  She currently holds operating grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Mental Health Commission of Canada. Her scholarly work earned her three “Brain Star” awards from the Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health, and Addictions (Canadian Institutes of Health Research), the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions, and the Canadian Psychological Association President’s New Researcher Award. Dr. Nicholls’ research examines the intersections of law and mental health related to the provision of services to marginalized populations (homeless mentally ill, forensic patients, persons in conflict with the law). She is particularly interested in the assessment and treatment of violence and criminality and the development and implementation of evidence-based practices that bridge the research-clinical practice chasm. Her publications have covered diverse topics including inpatient aggression in psychiatric settings, women in conflict with the law, psychopathy, the potential contribution of protective factors to the violence risk assessment field, and intimate partner abuse. She has been particularly active in knowledge exchange, publishing several manuals to inform evidence-based practice and being actively engaged in large-scale implementations and evaluations including measures to inform: violence risk assessments (Short-Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability (START), Webster, Martin, Brink, Nicholls, & Middleton, 2004; Webster, Martin, Brink, Nicholls, & Desmarais, 2009; START: Adolescent Version abbreviated manual, Nicholls, Viljoen, Cruise, Desmarais, & Webster, 2010; START:AV full manual, Viljoen, Nicholls, Cruise, Desmarais, & Webster, in prep), mental health screening in correctional settings (Jail Screening Assessment Tool, Nicholls, Roesch, Olley, Ogloff, & Hemphill, 2005) and assessments and safety planning with women coping with or escaping intimate partner abuse (Decision-making In Abusive Relationships Interview, Nicholls, Hilterman, Tengstrom, 2010). In 2007, she received a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Career Scholar award (2007-2013). She also presently holds a Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator salary award (2011-2016).

Rosaura Orengo-Aguayo, M.A., is a 3rd year doctoral student at the Clinical Psychology Program at the University of Iowa. Ms. Orengo-Aguayo earned her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Puerto Rico and her M.A. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Iowa. Before pursuing graduate studies, Ms. Orengo-Aguayo was funded by NIMH Career Opportunities in Undergraduate Research Program (COR) to conduct research on intimate partner violence among Latina women and on relationship dynamics among low-income minority couples. She has also been awarded the National Academy of Science Ford Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to conduct research on relationship dynamics and intimate partner violence among low-income Hispanic and black couples. During the past three years, Ms. Orengo-Aguayo has been actively involved in developing an empirically-based intervention based on third-wave behavior therapies such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) aiming to reduce violent behaviors among men convicted of domestic assault. Ms. Orengo-Aguayo is passionate about translating basic research into interventions that can improve the quality of life of underserved populations and hopes to continue this work in the future. 

Michelle M. Pritchard received her BSc in psychology from Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. Ms. Pritchard is currently completing a Masters in Public Health degree at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada. Her final Masters project is examining Intimate Partner Violence risk assessment instruments from a public health perspective. She is also a project coordinator with the Forensic Psychiatric Services Commission, BC Mental Health and Addiction Services in Port Coquitlam, BC as well as in the Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Kim A. Reeves is a doctoral student of Clinical Psychology with a specialization in Forensics at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Ms. Reeves received her BA in Psychology with a minor in Criminal Justice from The College of New Jersey in Ewing, NJ. She then earned her Masters of Arts in Forensic Psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Ms. Reeves worked as the Research Coordinator at the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture for one and a half years. During that time, she was part of the research team who investigated the Expedited Removal and Asylum Seeking process under the mandate of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. She decided to continue with her education and received her Masters of Arts in Clinical Psychology at SFU where she is now pursing her Doctoral degree.

Ms. Reeves has been involved in a variety of research pertaining to torture, PTSD, and policy both in the US and abroad. During her time at John Jay and now at SFU, Ms. Reeves has focused on the study of risk assessment especially in the context of intimate partner violence and stalking. She has received several grants to support her research including being one of the inaugural winners of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship.
While studying at SFU, Ms. Reeves completed a practicum at the Vancouver Police Department in the Domestic Violence and Criminal Harassment Unit. She consulted with the police and helped them implement risk assessments in their daily practice and assisted in developing management plans for offenders and safety plans for victims. This work has informed her research on risk assessment as she firmly believes in the scientist-practitioner model in psychology.

Martin Rohling, Ph.D. received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Alabama. He is currently a full Professor of Psychology at the University of South Alabama and also is the Director of Clinical Training for USA’s Clinical and Community Psychology Ph.D. programs. Dr. Rohling is an expert in brain functioning and behavior. He is a renowned neuropsychologist with numerous empirical publications. He contributed statistical expertise to the current project.

Brenda Russell, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Penn State Berks. She received her B.A. and M.A. in psychology from Central Connecticut State University and her Ph.D. in psychology form Saint Louis University.  Her scholarly and teaching interests include psychology and law, perceptions of victims and perpetrators of domestic violence, homicide defendants, and the social psychological and cognitive aspects of jury decision making. She is particularly interested in how gender and sexual orientation play a role in evaluating defendants in cases of domestic violence, rape, sexual coercion, bullying, and sexual harassment. Her research on domestic violence can be seen in her book entitled Battered Woman Syndrome as a Legal Defense: History, Effectiveness, and Implications.  Dr. Russell also serves as consultant and program evaluator for various federal and state educational, law enforcement, justice, and treatment programs. Her teaching interests include introduction to psychology, social psychology, psychology and the law (forensic psychology), research methods, social cognition, program evaluation, careers in psychology, senior capstone, psychology of gender, and criminal investigation.

Candice Selwyn, B.A. received her undergraduate degree in Psychology in 2010 from the University of South Alabama, where she is currently a second year student pursuing a Master of Science degree in Applied Psychology. Over the past three years, Candice has actively pursued research topics associated with her interest in aggressive behaviors. Specifically, she has been involved in research projects investigating issues such as intimate partner violence, psychopathy, non-suicidal self harm, suicide proneness, and suicidal behaviors. She is currently in the process of applying for doctoral programs in both Clinical and Counseling Psychology and ultimately aspires to obtain a career in academia.

Stan K. Shernock, Ph.D., is the Charles A. Dana Professor and chair of the Department of Justice Studies and Sociology at Norwich University.  He received his B.A. in criminology from the University of California (Berkeley), his M.A. in sociology from Indiana University, and his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Virginia.  He has served as president of the North-eastern Association of Criminal Justice Sciences, as a member of different committees of the American Society of Criminology and Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, as a consultant to the National Institute of Justice, as an editorial board member of five journals of criminal justice, and as book review editor of another.  He has published numerous articles on policing topics, as well as on other aspects of criminal justice and sociology.

Joann Wu Shortt, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist at the Oregon Social Learning Center. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington. Shortt investigates how family and peer relationships including siblings and couples shape our development across the life span. Her research focuses on emotion processes such as emotion regulation, physiological functioning, and parent socialization of children’s emotions. This work has involved observational methodology to understand interactional processes and mechanisms at work in predicting relationship outcomes, intimate partner violence, and child/adolescent/adult psychopathology. Shortt has been a co-investigator on the Oregon Youth Study-Couples Study for over 10 years. She is currently the Principal Investigator on a cross-site study developing an emotion-focused parenting intervention for high-risk mothers to promote emotion regulation and emotion-coaching skills.

Penny Shtull, Ph.D. is an associate professor of criminal justice at Norwich University in Vermont. She earned a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in Criminal Justice, as well as a M.A. in Forensic Psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, and a B.S.W. from McGill University in Montreal.

In addition to her publications in police and criminological journals, Dr. Shtull has served as a consultant for various organizations, state agencies and consulting firms including the Police Foundation (Washington, D.C.); the New York City Police Department; the Vera Institute of Justice (N.Y.); the Criminal Justice Research Center (N.Y.); the Vermont Center for Justice Research; the Burlington Police Department (VT); the Vermont Department of Corrections; the Chittenden Unit for Special Investigations (CUSI); the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council; the Vermont Children’s Alliance and the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) Program; and Margolis, Healy and Associates. In addition, she has served on the Washington County, Vermont Sexual Assault Review Team, the Vermont Department of Corrections Reparative Probation Board, and the Educational Advisory Board at the Northwest State Correctional Center. Professor Shtull is a Past President of the Northeastern Association of Criminal Justice Sciences (NEACJS) and has served on its executive board in various capacities since 1997.  In June 2009, she was the recipient of the Northeastern Association of Criminal Justice Sciences Association’s Founders Award in recognition of her service and significant and outstanding contributions to the Association. Dr. Shtull is currently engaged in research that is focused on a multidisciplinary team approach to the investigation and response to child sexual abuse in VT

Michael A. Skibo earned his B.A. from Furman University in 2009 and is now a graduate student of Developmental Psychology in the Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology at the University of Rochester. Presently, he is supervising a NINR-funded longitudinal study of mother-child relationships, attachment, and physiological regulation. His research is concerned with the influence of family processes on children’s emotion regulation and physiological regulation. In particular, he is interested in relationships between parenting and children’s ability to self-regulate in the face of stress

Melissa Sturge-Apple, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology at the University of Rochester. Dr. Sturge-Apple earned a M.Ed. from Harvard University in the area of Risk and Prevention, and worked as a family counselor for five years.  After this, she returned to school and received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Notre Dame and served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Mt. Hope Family Center.  Her research focuses on understanding family processes, child coping and adaptation to family contexts, and children’s socio-emotional adjustment.  She is an author on over 25 publications and is a recipient of the Reuben Hill Research and Theory Award from the National Council on Family Relations. Her research is currently funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Nursing Research.

Joel G. Sprunger, B.A. is a graduate student in the doctoral Clinical Psychology program at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.  He received his B.A. in Psychology from Purdue University at the Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne campus.  Joel’s research interests include the examination of risk factors for intimate partner violence in terms of the processes through which these factors impact the likelihood of future abusive events and how this information may better inform treatment/prevention efforts.

Robin P. Telford, M.A., is a doctoral student in Public Health at the University of South Florida in the Department of Community and Family Health.  Her specific area of study is behavioral health. She received her master’s degree in forensic psychology from Marymount University. Her research interests include treatment of individuals in the criminal justice system and delivery of mental health services, with a specific focus on individuals with serious mental illness, especially schizophrenia spectrum disorders. She currently works as the project manager on a grant designed to improve reentry services for justice-involved adults with a serious mental illness in Miami-Dade County.

Carolyn West, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington, where she teaches courses on Family Violence and Human Sexuality.  She writes, trains, consults, and lectures internationally on interpersonal violence and sexual assault, with a special focus on African American women. She has developed culturally sensitive domestic violence/sexual assault training material for a variety of organizations, including the Supreme Court of Ohio and City of Seattle Human Services Division. Dr. West frequently delivers keynote addresses and workshops for State Coalitions Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (California, Maryland, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin).  Dr. West has lectured internationally and conducted workshops and presented papers at more than 100 conferences, including those of the American Psychological Association. She has given invited presentations at universities around the country, including Harvard University, Howard University School of Divinity, and Columbia University Law School. Dr. West also has given television, radio, newspaper, and magazine interviews (Essence, Washington Post, National Public Radio). She has served as an expert witness in domestic violence cases involving victim-defendants (women who use violence in self-defense) and testified at Congressional Briefings in Washington, DC.

Dr. West has authored or co-authored more than 40 journal articles and book chapters. She is editor/contributor of Violence in the Lives of Black Women: Battered, Black, and Blue which was published by Haworth Press in 2002 (winner of the 2004 Carolyn Payton Early Career Award). In recognition of her scholarship, she received the Outstanding Research Award in the Field of Domestic Violence in the African American Community from the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community (2000). In 2005, she was honored as the first holder of the Bartley Dobb Professorship for the Study and Prevention of Violence. Dr. West also is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association.

Daniel J. Whitaker, Ph.D., received his doctorate in Psychology from the University of Georgia in 1996.  He worked as a research scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1997 to 2007, and he was a Team Leader in the Division of Violence Prevention, leading a team in the prevention of partner violence and child maltreatment.  In 2008, Dr. Whitaker became a Professor of Public Health at Georgia State University and the Director of the National SafeCare® Training and Research Center.  Since then, his work has been funded by the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Justice, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and the Annie E. Casey foundation.  Dr. Whitaker has published two books over 50 manuscripts and book chapters, including papers in the American Journal of Public Health, Child Maltreatment, and Aggression and Violent Behavior.  He is on the editorial board for the journal Child Maltreatment and Partner Violence, and has served as the CDC advisor to the American Medical Association’s National Advisory Committee on Violence and Abuse, and on the advisory board for Healthy Families Georgia and the National Family Preservation Network.

Zeev Winstok, Ph.D., an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Sciences and a Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Society at the University of Haifa, Israel, received a Ph.D. from the University of Haifa, Israel, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for Research on Youth and Social Policy, School of Social Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on a wide range of family violence, including partner violence, children’s exposure to interparental violence, and parents’ use of violence against their children. During the past decade, Professor Winstok won prestigious research grants, including a grant for a longitudinal study of the escalation of conflicts to violence among partners from the Israel Scientific Foundation, published dozens of articles in refereed journals in his field, such as Interpersonal Violence, Violence Against Women, and Aggressive Behavior and presented his work at numerous international conferences in his field. His book “Partner Violence: A New Paradigm for Understanding Conflict Escalation” is due for publication by Springer in late 2012 as part of The Springer Series on Human Exceptionality.

Kim Woodard received her BA in 2011 from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she majored in Psychology as well as Gender and Women’s Studies, and also minored in Sociology. Her undergraduate studies included internship placements at the American Psychological Association and the Domestic Violence Center of Howard County, Maryland. Ms. Woodard’s research interests focus on relationship functioning and intimate partner violence. 

Project Supervising Editor

John Hamel, LCSW, has a Masters in Social Welfare from U.C.L.A., and has conducted batterer intervention and parent programs in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1992.  He is the author, editor or co-editor of several books on family violence, including Gender-Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse(Springer, 2005), Family Interventions in Domestic Violence: A Handbook of Gender-Inclusive Theory and Treatment (Springer, 2007), and Intimate Partner and Family Abuse:  A Casebook of Gender Inclusive Therapy, published by Springer in 2008. Mr. Hamel is Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed professional journal, Partner Abuse, published quarterly by Springer Publishing.  He regularly speaks at conferences on domestic violence theory, research and practice, and has provided consultation and training to mental health professionals, victim advocates and shelter workers, social service organizations, teachers, attorneys, judges and law enforcement officers. He also provides case consultation and expert witness testimony.   Mr. Hamel can be contacted atjohnmhamel@comcast.net, or www.johnhamel.net