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SADRI

Social and Demographic Research Institute

Andrew Papachristos

Andrew Papachristos
(Ph.D. University of Chicago 2007)
Sociology

W31C Machmer Hall
(413) 545-0443
andrewp@soc.umass.edu

Andrew Papachristos is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology. His research uses social network analysis to examine the social structures and group processes at the heart of interpersonal violence and delinquency, issues of group dominance and reciprocity, and the use of violence and honor as measures of social control. His current research combines ethnographic and quantitative techniques to explain the network dynamics responsible for the social contagion of gang murder in Chicago over nearly two decades. Andrew is also currently involved in the evaluation of the Project Safe Neighborhoods program in Chicago and has just completed data collection on a four-neighborhood study of how illegal and pro-social networks of probationers and parolees influence offending patterns, interpersonal violence, gun markets and perceptions of neighborhood social order. His research has appeared in Foreign Policy, Criminology and Public Policy, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, and several edited books.His AJS article "Murder by Structure" has won the ASA Community Section's Jane Adams  Award for best paper. During academic years 2010-12, Professor Papachristos is serving as the Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar at Harvard University.

Personal Webpage

Curriculum Vitae

Current Grants:

2011-13. Urban Institute (lead), MacArthur Foundation (prime). Evaluation of the Chicago Violence Reduction Strategy

2010-12. Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. The Diffusion of Lethal and Non-Lethal Violence in Gang Networks

Recent Grants:

2008-10. Andrew Mellon Foundation.  Mutual Mentoring Initiative Grant.  With Anna Branch, David Cort, Wenona Rymond-Richmond, Amy Schalet and Melissa Wooten

2008-10.  NIJ. The Structural and Cultural Dynamics of Neighborhood Violence.  Co-PI. PI: David Kirk, UMaryland, Prime

Selected Publications:

"Cultural Mechanisms and the Persistence of Neighborhood Violence." American Journal of Sociology 116(4):1190-1233, 2011. With David S. Kirk.

"More Coffee, Less Crime? The Relationship between Gentrification and Neighborhood Crime Rates in Chicago, 1991 to 2005."  Accepted for publication in City & Community.  With Chris Smith, Melissa Fugerio and Mary L. Scherer. 

"Murder by Structure: Dominance Relations and the Social Structure of Gang Homicide." American Journal of Sociology 115:74-128, 2009.

"Attention Felons: Evaluating Project Safe Neighborhoods in Chicago." Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 4(2), 2007. With Tracey Meares and Jeffrey Fagan.