If you are new to the area, Courtney would love to welcome you to the city. As a born-and-raised South Knoxvillian and Volunteer, Courtney (she/they) can give you recommendations for food, hiking, sight-seeing, and ways to avoid stairs on our hilly campus. Outside of class and her role as a graduate research assistant for the Center for Transportation Research, she is a homebody, always content with a book in one hand and a delicious pastry in the other. She volunteers with an organization that works with sexual assault survivors – her main area of interest.

First joining the Sociology department as an undergraduate, Courtney received her bachelor’s degree in Sociology – Criminology and Criminal Justice in December. She is now in her first year in the Applied Sociology’s Master of Arts program. Heavily devoted to research, she chose the Applied Sociology program because she feels that will best boost her activist efforts.

Her core research interests lie within the field of narrative criminology along with restorative and transformative justice, and include sexual violence, narrative criminology, restorative justice, transformative justice, victimology, intersectionality, and feminism.

By studying and targeting the “scaffolding” that upholds and perpetuates sexual violence, she aims to dismantle the facets of rape culture and thereby increase prevention and accountability.