Rate My Professor Unique Shaw-Smith

Unique Shaw-Smith is an assistant professor whose research centers on the effects of incarceration on families, particularly children. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Bowling Green State University in 2014. Her dissertation, "Confining Mastery: Understanding the Influence of Parental Incarceration on Mastery in Young Adulthood," explores how parental incarceration affects young adults' sense of mastery. She also holds an M.A. in Sociology from BGSU (2011), with a thesis titled "Detainment is Not Colorblind: Parental Incarceration and the Educational Attainment of Children," and a B.A. in Criminal Justice from California State University, Chico (2009). Her work uses the life course perspective to understand how the timing and sequencing of life events can influence trajectories, reproducing inequality and problematic behaviors over time. Prior to her current role, she served as a Research Specialist II for Riverside County.

More recently, Unique Shaw-Smith has directed her research towards examining inequality and social change through the lens of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Her research interests include sociology, criminology and criminal justice, social psychology, life course perspective, incarceration, social exclusion, race and ethnicity, and quantitative research methods. Key publications include the co-authored paper with Raymond R. Swisher, "Paternal Incarceration and Adolescent Well-Being: Life Course Contingencies and Other Moderators," published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence in 2015, and a forthcoming article with the same co-author in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. She has received several honors during her graduate studies, including the Golden Key Graduate Scholar Award (2011), Winifred O. Stone Graduate Student Development Award (2010), Phenomenal Woman Award (2010), and Outstanding Black Female Award (2009).