Family​ Diversity and the Disruptive Force of the Law | 12:30 PM

PANELISTS

Carla Shedd

Carla Shedd, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Sociology & Urban Education at The Graduate Center, CUNY whose research and teaching focus on: crime and criminal justice; race and ethnicity; law and society; social inequality; and urban policy. Shedd’s first book, Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice (Russell Sage, 2015), is the winner of multiple academic awards, including the prestigious C. Wright Mills Award given to the top book in sociology on the topic of social inequality. Unequal City examines the symbiosis between public school systems and the criminal justice system, specifically highlighting the racially stratified social and physical terrain youth traverse between home and school in Chicago. Shedd’s second book project, When Protection and Punishment Collide: America’s Juvenile Court System and the Carceral Continuum, draws on her one-of-a-kind empirical data to interrogate how NYC schools and juvenile justice courts deftly intertwine the contexts of urban schools, urban neighborhoods, and juvenile justice courts, in this dynamic moment of NYC public policy shifts (e.g., school choice, educational segregation/stratification, “Raise the Age,” and “Close Rikers.”).

Kevin Roy

Kevin Roy, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Family Science at the University of Maryland College Park School of Public Health. His research focuses on the life course of young men on the margins of kin networks and the work force, as they transition into adulthood and fatherhood. Through participant observation and life history interviews, he explores the intersection of health disparities (specifically trauma), masculinities, and policy systems, such as welfare reform, community-based parenting programs, and incarceration. He has received funding for his research from NICHD, the W.T. Grant Foundation, and the National Poverty
Center.   Roy has published in Journal of Marriage and Family, Social Problems, American Journal of Community Psychology, Journal of Family Issues, and Family Relations. With Bill Marsiglio, he recently published Nurturing dads: Social initiatives for contemporary fathering in the ASA Rose Series at Russell Sage Foundation Press (2012). He received a Ph.D. in Human Development & Social Policy at Northwestern University in 1999.

Kristen Strain
Kristen Strain is the Executive Director of the Tahirih Justice Center’s Baltimore office. Kristen, a native of Baltimore, has had a long relationship with the Tahirih Justice Center as a dedicated pro bono attorney, Bighearted Attorney Fundraising Campaign Coordinator, and Baltimore Advisory Council member. Prior to joining Tahirih in 2016, she practiced law at Baltimore’s largest firm, Venable LLP, for almost 15 years, representing clients in multi-jurisdictional civil litigation, mediation and arbitration, construction law and corporate law, and engaged in extensive pro bono legal representation in matters of women and children’s rights.

Kristen also maintained a substantial Tahirih pro bono practice, advocating for clients before the United States Immigration Court and in administrative proceedings of the Department of Homeland Security, United States Customs and Immigration Service for grants of humanitarian Asylum, assisting clients with grants of Asylum in obtaining derivative Asylum status for family members abroad and permanent residence, and representing women seeking temporary and permanent protective orders in domestic violence cases in Maryland state court.