Criminology assistant professor honored with young scholar award

It seems premature to be thinking about his legacy, jokes Assistant Professor Kwan-Lamar Blount-Hill, but his hopes for how he will be remembered are a direct reflection of who he is today, as a person and a researcher.

Blount-Hill was recognized with the Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award on Nov. 12 at the American Society of Criminology’s annual meeting. The award, given for outstanding scholarly contributions in the first five years after doctoral completion, is considered one of the most prestigious honors for young faculty doing criminology-related research.

His biography for the award states that “collaboration is a hallmark of his work.” The biography names a dozen people with whom he has partnered, and he wishes he could have included more. Success in science is a collaborative effort and should be acknowledged as such, he said.

“My life is a collection of contributions from a lot of people who are not named. There is no way that you get a ‘Kwan’ just from the efforts from this singular body or mind. Everything that I've ever accomplished relies on the contributions of others,” he says. “If you were to take away one thing from my career, I want it to be that the people you're connected to matter — your success is a collaborative effort.”

It might seem anomalous for a young scholar to be thinking so deeply about legacy, but with Blount-Hill, it fits. The same could be said for his career choices, which appear incompatible; he moved from environmental science to law to public safety, and finally theoretical approaches to criminology. But when described by Blount-Hill, his path feels almost calculated, as if his life experiences and career shifts would inevitably lead him to research topics like legitimacy and justice perceptions, identity and marginalization, and diversity and inclusion in science and academia.

Blount-Hill describes himself as “a scholar of identity” — his experiences shape what and how he researches. His life as a Black American, a Christian and a gay man are all reflected in his work on social justice, equality and the intersectional ways people cope with marginalization.

His identity is also deeply entwined with his family experience. Race was important in his family, and ideas of justice and injustice were dominant narratives during his upbringing. His family was also religious, he said, and they talked regularly about God’s purpose for them to be in service and improve the lives of others.

His commitment to collaboration is born out of Black American and Christian traditions, he says.

“My understanding of my faith and my interpretation of racial history recognizes that standing up to challenges and achieving successes are usually collaborative efforts. It almost never happens from any one person,” Blount-Hill explains.

Blount-Hill’s family experiences also gave him a faceted understanding of the criminal legal system; some members of his larger family circle were police officers, and some family members have experienced incarceration.

Yet, Blount-Hill says he did not come to the criminal legal field in a straightforward way. He wanted to be a doctor, but organic chemistry got in the way — and then he took some time figuring out which area of social justice should be his focus.

During his undergraduate years, he became interested in environmental justice and went on to earn a BS in environmental science at Tuskegee University. He even graduated from Emory University School of Law planning to focus on environmental concerns, but a lack of jobs in the field in 2011 led him back to criminal justice. He became a firefighter first, then later joined the Charleston Police Department as an officer.

The need to understand the human and social dynamics of law enforcement pushed him to study criminology at the University of South Carolina and then earn his PhD in criminal justice at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

In the near term, Blount-Hill plans to focus on the depth of his research, rather than undertaking new areas. He’s particularly interested in further exploring community approaches to gun violence and broadening the definition of diversity.

“I do a lot of work in community violence in the United States, where a lot of that violence is in the form of gun violence,” he said. “There's a lot of room to develop the theories around gun violence, but specifically to develop the best ways to intervene in gun violence, and even more specifically, the best ways to do so from a community-based approach that strengthens communities.”

He’s also interested in developing a more rigorous empirical approach to his work on the importance of researcher identity and cognitive diversity. He wants to push beyond using demographics and pursue experiential diversity that “reflects the widest perspective of human experience” possible through citizen science and practitioner-researcher partnerships.

“The more we draw from the diversity of experiences, the greater the field of innovation in terms of ideas for how to explain or address problems and also to come up with new solutions,” he explains. “I’m interested in increasing our ability to innovate, in large part through enhancing and growing the field of minds that are engaged. ”

Having more voices involved in research will improve its accuracy and help rebuild trust in science, Blount-Hill says. It will help people see their experiences confirmed and explained by studies, giving them more confidence in other work by the institution.

With that goal to include more people in science and academia, he feels at home at Arizona State University. The institution embraces intellectual inclusivity, encouraging researchers to conduct multidisciplinary efforts, he says.

“There's no topic I can think of where ASU does not have a group of really smart, innovative people for me to talk to,” said Blount-Hill. “ASU provides resources and encourages us to really live up to our full capacity to innovate, and that is not something that you find in every school of criminology or every field.”

The American Society of Criminology has handed out the Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award annually since 1997 in honor of the award’s namesake, a sociologist who researched criminology, delinquency and the role of family.

“The names of the people who have earned this award are pretty big names in criminology, big enough where I am now a little self-conscious about being on that list,” Blount-Hill said. “I'm internalizing the award as a vote of confidence in my potential and an encouragement to continue on this trajectory.”

Blount-Hill was nominated by fellow criminology scholar Kevin Drakulich, professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and co-director of the Race and Justice Lab at Northeastern University. Drakulich and Blount-Hill have overlapping research interests and met through professional associations.

“Dr. Blount-Hill is emerging as one of the most exciting and impactful scholars in the field. What is most striking is that he has made substantial contributions with high-quality publications to a series of very different subfields — connected mainly by a sharp critical lens for approaching theory and method,” Drakulich says.

Blount-Hill is the third ASU faculty member to be given the young scholar award. Min Xie received the award in 2012, and two years later, Callie Burt earned the honor.