Dr. Pridemore is Department Head and Marienthal Professor in the Department of Sociology at University of Georgia. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Society of Criminology.

Dr. Pridemore received his PhD in 2000 from the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany – SUNY and spent 2003-2004 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard in the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. 

In 2008 he received the Junior Scholar Award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Alcohol, Drugs, and Tobacco, in 2024 he received the Senior Scholar Award from ASA's Section on Drugs & Society, and in 2023 he received the Albert J. Reiss Jr. Distinguished Scholar Award from ASA’s Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance. In 2012 he received the Radzinowicz Memorial Prize for his research on poverty, inequality, and national homicide rates. In 2015 he received the Freda Adler Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology’s Division of International Criminology and the Gerhard O.W. Mueller Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Science’s International Section, both for significant contributions to international criminology over the course of his career. In summer 2025 he served as the inaugural Barbara Huber Scholar in the Department of Criminology at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security, and Law in Freiburg, Germany. 

Dr. Pridemore played a central role in the creation and was a founding Editorial Board member of Annual Review of Criminology. He was the American Society of Criminology’s liaison to the American Association for the Advancement of Science for 16 years, and with Karen Parker revived US News & World Report’s ranking of PhD programs in the field of Criminology. Dr. Pridemore created and was the Founding Director of Indiana University’s Workshop in Methods, and he was Dean of the UAlbany School of Criminal Justice School from 2015 to 2020.

RESEARCH

Dr. Pridemore’s main research interests include the impact of social structure and culture on homicide and suicide rates, the role of alcohol in violence and mortality, and population health. Other research interests include measurement and method, rural criminology and sociology, and the effects of policy on outcomes like violence and health.

Dr. Pridemore has published more than 110 articles in peer-reviewed journals. His research is interdisciplinary in nature and has been published in leading journals in several fields, including criminology (Criminology, Annual Review of Criminology, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency), sociology (Annual Review of Sociology, Journal of Health & Social Behavior, Social Forces, Social Problems, Social Science & Medicine), and public health and epidemiology (American Journal of Public Health, Addiction, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, European Journal of Public Health, BMC Public Health). He has a forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press entitled The Criminologic Transition Model: On the Evolution of the Nature of Crime and Violence, and you can listen to an AI-generated podcast-like discussion of it on CrimRxiv here. He edited a volume on law, crime, and justice in Russia published by Rowman & Littlefield, and with Marieke Liem co-edited a volume on European homicide research published by Springer. Dr. Pridemore’s research has been funded by, among others, National Institutes of Health, National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, National Institute of Justice, and American Sociological Association’s Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline.

I am a social psychologist studying status inequality and social psychological theory, working with Dr. Jody Clay-Warner. I am currently examining the spread of status between task groups and social groups. Please see my CV or website for more of my works in progress.

Larissa do Carmo Inácio is a Ph.D. Student at UGA's Sociology Department. She is from Brazil and attended the University of Brasilia (UnB), where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Education, and a Master's degree, all in Sociology. She is also a Graduate Research Assistant for the Research and Computational Data Management (RCDM) department, offering support for UGA faculty and student research on research data management, visualization, and analysis planning.

Her main research focus is political sociology, social studies of science and technology, data studies, and Latin America's context. As a sociology student, Larissa has never quickly settled for superficial answers. She was always drawn to issues that would make her understand this sometimes strange relationship between power, science, technology, and this emerging data-driven society.