Kirk R. Williams. Dr. Williams is Professor of Sociology and Faculty Fellow in the Robert Presley Center for Crime and Justice Studies. He received the Ph.D. from the University of Arizona (1977) and did post-doctoral work at Yale University (1981-1982). He has held faculty appointments at the University of Memphis (1976-1984) and the University of New Hampshire (1984-1990), where he also affiliated with the Family Research Laboratory. He was appointed to the sociology faculty at the University of Colorado - Boulder in 1990 and served as the Founding Associate Director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence from 1992-1999. There, he directed research and technical assistance efforts on human development and violence prevention. He has published widely on the causes and prevention of violence, particularly involving youth or adult intimate partners, and has received numerous grants from federal and state funding sources, in addition to private foundations. He also has worked extensively with community-based groups, schools, and agencies in violence prevention planning, implementation, and evaluation.

Austin T. Turk. Dr. Turk is Professor of Sociology and was the founding (interim) director of the Presley Center for Crime and Justice Studies (1994-95). After completing his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, he held faculty appointments at Indiana University (1962-1974) and the University of Toronto (1974-1988). He is a Fellow (1978) and a Past President (1984-1985) of the American Society of Criminology, and has served on the Board of Trustees (1982-1984) of the Law and Society Association and on the Board of Directors (1976-1986) of the Research Committee for the Sociology of Deviance and Control, International Sociological Association. He has written extensively on conflict theory; law, power, and social inequalities; and the dimensions, sources, and policing of political crime. Recent and current work focuses on patterns and trajectories of political violence, including terrorism.

Robert Nash Parker. Dr. Parker is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Presley Center for Crime and Justice Studies. He received the Ph.D. in Sociology from Duke University (1980). He has held faculty appointments at the University of Akron, Rutgers University, and the University of Iowa. He also was a NIAAA Post Doctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Senior Research Scientist and Study Director at the Prevention Research Center, Berkeley, California, a non profit National Center funded by NIAAA and devoted to the study and prevention of alcohol related social problems. Dr. Parker’s research interests include criminal justice policy analysis and evaluation, the relation between alcohol and violence, both offending and victimization, the relation between alcohol policy and crime prevention, and the development and application of geo-spatial statistical models to the study of violence, alcohol, and other social problems. He has been the Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on several funded projects and has published widely on the causes of violence, particularly homicide, including a 1995 book published by State University of New York Press, Alcohol and Homicide: A Deadly Combination of Two American Traditions."