Rate My Professor Kayla Allison

Kayla Allison is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, a position she has held since 2020. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology and Criminal Justice from Indiana University Bloomington in August 2020. Earlier, she completed a Bachelor's degree in Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in 2015 and a Bachelor's in Music Supervision at Indiana University Bloomington in 2010. During her graduate studies, Allison served as an Associate Instructor and Research Assistant in the Department of Criminal Justice at Indiana University Bloomington from 2015 to 2019, and as a Research Assistant in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Arkansas from 2013 to 2015.

Allison's research specializes in social networks, the intersection of gender, race, class, and crime, child maltreatment, and bias crime. Her ongoing research explores the influence of social networks on family reunification processes in child abuse and neglect cases, the impacts of race, class, gender, and sexuality on bias crime offending, and the use of victim-blaming language in news stories about sexual assaults on college campuses. Funded by the National Institute of Justice, her scholarship has been published in leading journals including Justice Quarterly, the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Social Science Research, Crime and Delinquency, and The Sociological Quarterly. Key publications include "An Open-Source Data Approach to Studying Bias Murder: An Introduction to the Bias Homicide Database (BHDB)" (Homicide Studies, 2026), "Intersections of Crime and Health: Structural Inequalities, Spatial Dynamics, and Policy" (2025), "Police Responses to People Experiencing Homelessness" (2024), "The Long Arm of School Punishment: The Role of School Suspension on Self-Rated Health from Adolescence to Midlife" (2024), and "Strained Masculinity and Mass Shootings: Toward a Theoretically Integrated Approach to Assessing the Gender Gap in Mass Violence" (2022). She teaches courses such as Social Theory, Social Psychology, and Introduction to Criminology and Criminal Justice, mentors students in the Crime Analytics REU program, and is an active member of the American Sociological Association, American Society of Criminology, Sociologists for Women in Society, and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.