Dr. Thomas McNulty, Associate Professor of Sociology, has been at the University of Georgia since 1996. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University at Albany (SUNY) in 1996. His specialty areas include criminology and urban sociology.  Dr. McNulty's recent work focuses on testing multilevel theoretical models of racial and ethnic disparities in crime/violence, with emphasis on the intersection of individual differences and family, school, and neighborhood contexts. Related research stresses the role of persistent exposure to material hardship in the onset of externalizing and aggressive behavior in childhood, with implications for delinquency in adolescence. He teaches Criminology (SOCI 3810).For additional information please click here.

Maltese’s books include The Selling of Supreme Court Nominees (winner of the “C. Herman Pritchett Award” from the Law & Courts Section of the American Political Science Association), Spin Control: The White House Office of Communications and the Management of Presidential News, The Politics of the Presidency (co-authored with Joseph A. Pika) which is currently in its 8th edition, and Government Matters: American Democracy in Context (co-authored with Joseph A. Pika and W. Philips Shively). He is a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor (the University of Georgia’s highest teaching honor) and was named the 2004 Georgia Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). He has served as a Senior Teaching Fellow and is a member of the UGA Teaching Academy. He is the founding director of the SPIA at Oxford Study Abroad Program and was named the OIE Study Abroad Director of the Year in 2003. He has written editorials for the Washington Post and Atlanta Journal-Constitution and has been widely quoted and cited in the national and international media, from CNN.com and the Wall Street Journal to the New Yorker and La Stampa. He has been interviewed on C-SPAN, Fox News, and National Public Radio, and was an on-screen commentator for the French documentary film, Le storytelling ou l’art de raconter les histoires, which traces how narrative techniques have changed political communication. In 2007, he directed a 3-day conference at the University of Georgia on the presidency of Jimmy Carter that aired live on C-SPAN and won the CASE District III Award for Institutional Events.

In his spare time, Maltese writes about classical music and, with his father, is the official biographer of the violinist Jascha Heifetz. Both he and his father won a Grammy Award in 1996 from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for liner notes that they co-authored for the 65-CD BMG Classics set, The Heifetz Collection, and they have also co-authored liner notes for Deutsche Grammophon and Sony, and co-produced a CD set, The Dawn of Recording, comprised of homemade cylinder recordings from the 1890s that they discovered in Russia (including the voices of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky and performances by leading 19th-century musicians who made no other known recordings). The set was named the “Recording of the Month” by CD Review in March 2009 and garnered major stories in such outlets as the New York Times and NPR’s “All Things Considered.”  Maltese is an on-screen commentator in the documentary film God’s Fiddler, directed by the Emmy Award-winning Peter Rosen, which received its regional premiere at UGA’s Hodgson Hall in 2011 as part of a “Heifetz Celebration” that Maltese organized with the support of the President’s Venture Fund and other units on campus. Material from his extensive collection of musical autographs and manuscripts formed the basis of an exhibit at the UGA Museum of Art in 2006 and at the Hollywood Bowl Museum in 2001.

Dr. Dan Silk serves as the Associate Vice President for Public Safety for University of Georgia. He assumed this position in 2023 after nearly three decades working in law enforcement, which culminated in his role as the Chief of the University of Georgia Police Department from 2018-2023.

In addition to his time at the University of Georgia Police Department, Dan previously worked as a captain with the Athens-Clarke County Police Department, and served on the first permanent staff at the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan after 9/11 as a special agent with the US State Department.

Dan completed three degrees at UGA, and was a Fulbright Fellow at the Institute of Applied Social Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK, where his research focused on police outreach with Muslim communities. Dan has a courtesy faculty appointment in UGA’s Department of Political Science, and he teaches in UGA’s Criminal Justice Studies Program. He has consulted or taught for a variety of governmental and non-governmental organizations in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, primarily focusing on projects connected to applications of community policing. He was the lead editor of the book Preventing Ideological Violence: Communities, Police, and Case Studies of Success, and he continues to publish articles and book chapters that focus on innovations in policing, and create and deliver related training.

Dan is married to Monira Silk, a local business owner and non-profit executive in Athens, and they have two daughters, Miriam and Nadine.

Teena Wilhelm is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science. She has been at the University of Georgia since 2005, and received her PhD in American Politics from the University of Arizona. Her authored or co-authored research has appeared in major political science and legal studies journals, and has been honored by the Southern Political Science Association. Her research has also garnered a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Wilhelm’s teaching and research specialties are judicial institutions, state politics, and constitutional law. She has been recognized for outstanding teaching by the School of Public and International Affairs, the Department of Political Science, the Honors Program, and the American Political Science Association. She is an affiliated faculty with the Criminal Justice Studies Program, and is also involved in several GLOBIS study abroad programs. Wilhelm has been a mentor for the Honors Program since 2008, and currently serves as Director of Graduate Studies.

Rich Vining holds the Ph.D. in Political Science from Emory University (2008). His research interests center on courts and judicial politics and process. He supervises interns and teaches Criminal Justice Administration (POLS 3600). For more information please click here.

Todd Krohn holds the M.A. in Sociology from Georgia State University (1993). With interests in critical penology and crime as political capital Mr. Krohn teaches Criminology (SOCI 3810) and Criminal Punishment and Society (SOCI 3150). For more information please click here.

Dr. Jody Clay-Warner, Meigs Professor of Sociology (view Dr. Clay-Warner's Meigs video) and Director of the Owens Institute for Behavioral Research, has been at the University of Georgia since 1998. She received a Ph.D. in Sociology from Emory University, and her specialty areas include social psychology, criminology, and gender.  She is the co-editor of Social Psychology Quarterly and the co-director of the Laboratory for the Study of Social Interaction (LASSI).

The overarching goal of her research is to understand responses to injustice. She considers this issue from both a basic and applied perspective.  Specifically, she examines the underlying processes that guide responses to injustice, as well as the implications of these processes for reactions to concrete forms of injustice, such as criminal victimization. She employs experimental and survey methods to investigate these issues, and her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of State. Her current projects focus on human trafficking victimization in Sub-Saharan Africa, the mental and physical health effects of violent victimization, and the relationship between gendered violence and inequality.

David Mustard serves on the Executive Committe of the Criminal Justice Studies Program. His research explores the racial and gender differences in sentencing, the efficacy  of gun control laws, how casinos and visitors influence crime rates, and the interaction between labor markets and crime. He holds the Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago (1997). For more information please click here.

Justine E. Tinkler earned the Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University in 2007. She employs experimental, survey-based, and qualitative research methods to provide empirical evidence for advancing theory in social psychology, law and inequality. Dr. Tinkler teaches the Sociology of Law (SOCI 4830). For more information please click here.