Editorial Board Member of …Qualitative…Criminology
Affiliation | Old Dominion University
Email | [email protected]
Website | odu.edu/directory/people/v/vpanfil
Twitter | @VanessaPanfil
Topic | Queer criminology, youth gangs, gender and sexuality
Method | Urban ethnography, semistructured in-depth interviews, focus groups, content analysis, case studies
Bio | Vanessa R. Panfil is an ethnographer, criminologist, sociologist, and advocate. She is the author of The Gang’s All Queer: The Lives of Gay Gang Members (NYU Press, 2017), the co-author of the forthcoming book Sex-Positive Criminology (Routledge, 2021), and the co-editor of the Handbook of LGBT Communities, Crime, and Justice (Springer, 2014; second edition forthcoming 2022). Her research explores how intersections of gender and sexuality shape individuals’ experiences with gangs, crime, victimization, and the criminal and juvenile justice systems. Her recent article in Criminology was only its third ever to focus on LGBTQ populations and concerns. Centrally involved in developing the subfield of queer criminology, she regularly reviews articles and manuscripts for over a dozen journals and publishers, and co-edits Routledge’s Queering Criminology and Criminal Justice book series. She is also deeply committed to exploring qualitative methods, both from an epistemological perspective, and in terms of how we can improve the ethics, rigor, and transparency of our work. For more than 15 years, she has volunteered for LGBTQ advocacy organizations, and for the past 8 years has been actively involved in campus organizations that seek to improve the quality of life for LGBTQ+ students, staff, and faculty in higher education. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Prior to joining ODU, she served as a post-doctoral associate in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University-Newark, and earned her PhD in Criminal Justice from the University at Albany.