William Alex Pridemore

Dean
School of Criminal Justice
Department: Criminal Justice

Expertise:
Social structure and homicide and suicide rates; role of alcohol in violence and mortality; sociology of health and illness; violence and premature mortality in Russia; effects of policy on outcomes like violence and health; rural criminology and sociology

Campus phone: (518) 442-5214
Campus email: [email protected]

Biography:

William Alex Pridemore is dean of and professor in the School of Criminal Justice at University at Albany. Pridemore’s main research interests include the impact of social structure on homicide and suicide rates, role of alcohol in violence and mortality, and sociology of health and illness. Other research interests include violence and premature mortality in Russia, determining the effects of policy on outcomes like violence and health, rural criminology and sociology, measurement and method, and domestic terrorism.

Pridemore has been principal investigator or co-principal investigator on grants totaling more than $2.5 million, and his research has been funded by National Institutes of Health, National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, National Institute of Justice, and American Sociological Association/National Science Foundation.

He has published more than 90 articles in peer-reviewed journals. His research is interdisciplinary in nature and has been published in leading journals in several disciplines, including criminology (Criminology, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Justice Quarterly), public health and epidemiology (American Journal of Public Health, Addiction), and sociology (Annual Review of Sociology, Journal of Health & Social Behavior, Social Forces, Social Problems). He also edited a volume on law, crime, and justice in transitional Russia, which was published by Rowman & Littlefield and co-edited (with Marieke Liem) a volume on European homicide research published by Springer.

In 2008, Pridemore received the Junior Scholar Award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Alcohol, Drugs, and Tobacco; in 2009 he received Indiana University’s Trustees Teaching Award; in 2012 he received the Radzinowicz Memorial Prize for his research on poverty, inequality, and national homicide rates; and in 2015 he received the Gerhard O.W. Mueller Award for Distinguished Contributions to International Criminal Justice from the Academy of Criminal Justice Science’s International Section, and the Freda Adler Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology’s Division of International Criminology for significant contributions to international criminology over the course of his career.

He is a founding Editorial Board member of the new Annual Review of Criminology, the American Society of Criminology’s liaison to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was the Founding Director of Indiana University’s Workshop in Methods.

Pridemore received his Ph.D. in 2000 from the University at Albany, and spent 2003-2004 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard in the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.