Reversing Trajectories will take place on April 16th, 17th and 18th. This conference will focus on the substantive links between incarceration and violence and their political results. We also have a subfocus of the conference on trajectory analysis (download and install) which is a useful tool in empirically studying these issues. 

Visit the QIPSR website for more information.

Thursday, April 17th , 2014

8:45-9:00 AM: President’s Room of the Singletary Center for the Arts

Introduction: Thomas Janoski, Director of QIPSR

Logic of the Conference, Claire Renzetti, Chair of the Sociology Department, UK.



9:00-10:30 AM: President’s Room of the Singletary Center for the Arts

Traci Burch, Political Science, Northwestern University.

Trading Democracy for Justice: Criminal Convictions and the Decline of Neighborhood Political Participation

Discussant: Mark Peffley, Political Science, University of Kentucky

10:45 AM-12:15 PM President’s Room of the Singletary Center for the Arts

Christopher Wildeman, Sociology Department, Yale University.

Children of the Prison Boom  or Detaining Democracy

Discussant: Brea Perry, Sociology, University of Kentucky

12:15-1:00 PM BOX LUNCH President’s Room of the Singletary Center for the Arts

1:00 PM to 2:30 PM President’s Room of the Singletary Center for the Arts

Alex Piquero, Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Texas at Dallas.

Criminal Trajectories and Human Capital

Discussant: Carrie Oser, Sociology, University of Kentucky

2:45 to 4:00 PM  President’s Room of the Singletary Center for the Arts

Amy Lerman, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, 

Punishment and Political Psychology.

Presider: Abby Cordova, Political Science, University of Kentucky

FRIDAY, APRIL 18th, 2014

8:30-8:50 AM, Continental Breakfast, Ovids around the corner at the W. T. Young Library

9:00-10:30 AM, W. T. Young Library Auditorium, 1st Floor.

Robert Apel, School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University

The Role of the Labor Market in the Criminal Career

Discussant: Janet Stamatel, Sociology, University of Kentucky

11:00 AM-12:30 PM W. T. Young Library Auditorium, 1st Floor.

Policy Recommendations

Traci Burch, Political Science, Northwestern University.

Alex Piquero, Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Texas at Dallas.

Amy Lerman, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley  

Presider: Justin Wedeking, Political Science, University of Kentucky

In 1964, Goldberg, alongside Nelson Mandela and six others, were tried and convicted for trying to overthrow the apartheid regime in South Africa. He spent the next 22 years in prison, and was released in 1985 on the condition that he be exiled from his native South Africa to Israel.

After his release, Goldberg instead traveled the world organizing international opposition to apartheid, becoming a spokesperson for the African National Congress, then the leading anti-apartheid organization and current ruling party of South Africa. Since South Africa's transition to democracy in 1994, Goldberg founded Health Education and Reconstruction Training (H.E.A.R.T.), a nongovernmental organization that supports local initiatives aimed at improving health, education and reconstruction in contemporary South Africa.

Goldberg's talk will highlight pivotal episodes in his life as a leading member of the anti-apartheid struggle, as recounted in detail in his recent autobiography "The Mission: A Life for Freedom in South Africa" (STE Publishers, 2010).

Jody Miller, Professor of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, examines how inequalities of gender, race, and class shape young women’s participation in crime and risks for victimization. Her books include the award winning Getting Played: African American Girls, Urban Inequality, and Gendered Violence (NYU Press, 2008) and One of the Guys: Girls, Gangs, and Gender (Oxford University Press, 2001).

The William S. Webb Museum will be presenting a collection of masks from the R. Craig Ray Collection. The exhibit will run from April 18, 2014 to September 4th, 2014.

There will be a reception the day of the opening of the exhibit and light refreshments will be served from 4 to 6pm.

El Museo Wiliam S. Webb exhibirá parte de su colección de máscaras y antifaces de la Colección R. Craig Ray. La exhibición se encontrará en el Foyer de Lafferty Hall del 18 de abril al 4 de septiembre del 2014.

El 18 de abril a las 4 pm habrá una recepción de ignauración. Habrán refrescos y boquitas.

Saving the World: Reflections on the US Government and Energy Security

“Saving the world” must sound terribly overstated, but global warming has become just that kind of issue for the U.S. government. Countering the effects of global warming has become an integral part of nearly every U.S. policy, and it is clear that if the U.S. government is to save our country from the effects of global warming, it must literally save the world, as we all live in a shared environment. Also, the need to save the world is mostly an issue of our own making, reflecting our desire for better, more secure lives based on improved health, agriculture, technology, national defense and mobility, and we have been so successful at creating these lives that much of the world now aspires to live the same. These improvements, however, require ever higher energy demands, which have been largely met by fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas that generate the greenhouse gases which have primarily fueled global warming.

Through accidents of geology and creative U.S. technology, our country is now offering the world an alternative to high-carbon fuels like coal and oil, and that is shale gas, natural gas produced from organic-rich shales that abound in our country and in much of the world — even in Kentucky! These rocks have been known and ignored for a long time, because the technology to fracture them and allow gas to flow was available until recently. This technology has now made gas the “go-to” fuel to counter global warming, because it produces less than half the CO₂ of burning coal and lacks the associated particulate and gaseous pollutants. As a result, it has become U.S. government policy to help wean countries from coal dependence, diversify energy sources, and encourage the switch to natural gas and other unconventional fuels.

Energy necessarily creates vulnerabilities and leverage among countries. Shale gas, for example, has made the U.S. a largely self-reliant, energy superpower and given it the leverage to further its environmental, energy-security and economic objectives, as well as those of its allies. At the same time, however, we must realize that gas is only a bridge fuel — a transition to a period of diverse, renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable development. It is hoped that this transition, what the Germans call “energiewende,” could ultimately result in a reorientation from demand to supply, a shift for centralized to dispersed energy distribution, and an overall democratization of energy.

Gas shales have clearly been a real game changer for the U.S., and potentially for the world, and for the last nine months as a Jefferson Fellow, I have been using my knowledge of gas shales to help colleagues in the Bureau of Energy Resources, Department of State, understand and assess shale resources. This has given me the opportunity to see how government works (or doesn’t) and how energy policy is formulated. In this talk, I would like to share some reflections on these issues with you. 

Abstract: Quantum mechanics is important for determining the geometry of spacetime. We will review the role of quantum fluctuations that determine the large scale structure of the universe. In some model universes we can give an alternative description of the physics in terms of a theory of particles that lives on its boundary. This implies that the geometry is an emergent property. Furthermore, entanglement plays a crucial role in the emergence of geometry. Large amounts of entanglement are conjectured to give rise to geometric connections, or wormholes, between distant and non-interacting systems.