Our People

Carmen Alvarez is an Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and a family nursing practitioner with Chase Brexton Health Care. She is a fellow with the American Academy of Nursing, as well as a SOURCE Service-Learning Faculty Fellow, and New Nurse Faculty Fellow from the Maryland Higher Education Commission. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan School of Nursing and her post-doctoral fellowship at George Washington University School of Public Health. Her research focuses on interventions that promote good health and reduce the risk of victimization for Latina and other ethnic minority women who are survivors of trauma, particularly IPV and ACEs. Her other areas of expertise and interest include women’s health, trauma, and health promotion.

Walter DeKeseredy is the Anne Dean Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences, the Director of the Research Center on Violence, and a Sociology Professor at West Virginia University. He has received many awards over the course of his decades-long career, including the Victimology Impact Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences’ Victimology section and the Robert Jerrin Book Award by the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Victimology, both in 2017. In 2015, he was awarded the Career Achievement Award from the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Victimology, and the year prior he was awarded the Critical Criminal Justice Scholar Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences’ Critical Criminal Justice Section. His research focuses on violence against women, the relationship between poverty and crime, and violent crime in rural areas. His teaching takes a broader approach with a focus on criminology and the criminal justice system, social justice and control, and deviance among other topics. His leisure interests include working out at the gym, golfing, and walking.

Rosa Gonzalez-Guarda is an associate professor and Dorothy L. Powell Term Chair of Nursing at Duke University School of Nursing and the Co-Director of the Community Engagement Core for Duke’s Clinical Translational Science Institute. Prior, she worked as an associate professor at the University of Miami School of Nursing & Health Studies where she helped lead research training and community engagement addressing health disparities. She has provided expertise and leadership in national efforts addressing nursing, health disparities, violence, and population. For example, she served on the Institute of Medicine Committee on the Future of Nursing (2010), the National Advisory Council on Nursing Education and Practice (NACNEP, 2012-2016), and Chaired the Violence Expert Panel for the American Academy of Nursing. She has received numerous awards including being inducted as fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (2014), the Excellence in Research Awards by the Nursing Network on Violence Against women (2020), and the Midcareer Scientist Award by DUSON (2021). Her research focuses on the health disparities experienced by racial and ethnic minorities, with a particular focus on addressing the substance abuse, intimate partner violence, HIV, and mental health syndemic among Latin@ immigrants.

Xavier L. Guadalupe-Diaz, Ph.D. is Associate Professor and the Criminology Program Coordinator at Framingham State University. Dr. Guadalupe-Diaz’s research focuses on various aspects of intimate partner and sexual violence within lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities including help-seeking, police disclosure, transgender victimization, risk factors, emotional abuse, and identity. He’s published numerous scholarly articles and chapters in journals such as the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Violence Against Women, Deviant Behavior, and the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment, and Trauma. He’s the author of the first scholarly book on transgender intimate partner violence entitled: Transgressed: Intimate Partner Violence in Transgender Lives by New York University Press (NYU Press) and is co-editor of Transgender Intimate Partner Violence: A Comprehensive Introduction also by NYU Press. Dr. Guadalupe-Diaz was recognized with his university’s Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activity. His ongoing research includes theoretical work on queer(ing) #MeToo, abolition and queer(ing) victimology, and examinations of polyvictimization and IPV help-seeking among transgender survivors of IPV in the US transgender survey. Dr. Guadalupe-Diaz serves on the Editorial Board of the SAGE journal Violence Against Women and is a Crime and Research Justice Alliance expert on violence in intimate relationships.

Dr. Gabriel Kuperminc is a professor of psychology and public health at Georgia State University. He also chairs the Community Psychology doctoral program as well as the university’s interdisciplinary initiative on resilient youth and is a faculty member for the Developmental Psychology program. Dr. Kuperminc is a member of the American Public Health Association and American Psychological Association, specifically the Society for Community Research and Action, Division 27 of the American Psychological Association. He is also a fellow for the American Psychological Association (2007), the Society for Applied Anthropology (2007), and the Society for Community Research and Action (2006). His research focuses on resilience and community interventions for positive adolescent development, particularly in immigrant and Latin@ families. Dr. Kuperminc’ s research interests include youth mentoring, youth development, community health interventions, and immigration. He has served as an expert panelist on the promotion of adolescent sexual health for the Center of Disease Control and Prevention. Outside of his work, Dr. Kuperminc enjoys photography, hiking, travelling, and spending time with his family.

Susana Mariscal, Ph.D., MSW is an associate professor of social work at Indiana University. She has studied Latinx teen dating violence; health and service access disparities among Latinx children and families; and resilience among youth exposed to domestic violence, identifying racial/ethnic differences in protective factors. Her research has been funded by the U.S. Children’s Bureau, U.S. Administration for Children & Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; the Office for Victims of Crime, U.S. Department of Justice; SAMHSA; UNICEF; Fulbright-LASPAU; and Fulbright-Alumni Engagement in Bolivia, among others. As a leader in the areas of resilience and strengths-based maltreatment prevention, Dr. Mariscal was invited to serve as an affiliated research scientist with the Life Paths Research Center in Tennessee. Her current project “Strengthening Indiana Families” (SIF) focuses on the implementation and evaluation of a continuum of community-based services and supports designed to promote healthy family environments and bolster the safety and well-being of families in central Indiana. With a particular focus on promoting racial equity, SIF is implementing four family resource centers to enhance family support, positive childhood experiences, and protective factors against maltreatment. This project is funded by a five-year, $2.85 million grant from the U.S. Children’s Bureau in the Administration for Children and Families.

Dr. Chiara Sabina is an associate professor in the Department of Women and Gender Studies at Delaware University. She previously worked as an associate professor of Community Psychology at Pennsylvania State University School of Behavioral Sciences and Education, as well as at the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. She is a Member at Large for Society for Community Research and Action, Division 27 of the American Psychological Association, and is Senior Consulting Editor for Psychology of Violence. Dr. Sabina received her PhD in Applied Social Psychology from Loyola University of Chicago. She has been awarded grants by the Fulbright Scholar Program, National Institute of Justice, Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, Vision of Hope, and National Sexual Violence Resource Center. Her research focuses on the victimization of Latin@ adolescents, including gender-based violence and teen dating violence, as well as culturally sensitive and informed interventions.

Michelle Alejandra Silva is a licensed clinical psychologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. She is also Director of the Connecticut Latino Behavioral Health System, an academic-community partnership designed to expand access to behavioral health services for the monolingual Spanish-speaking community of greater New Haven. Dr. Silva’s work bridges practice, education, and clinical research, and she engages in multidisciplinary collaborations designed to promote health equity among vulnerable and underserved communities. She provides outpatient clinical services to children, adolescents, and adults; conducts psychological evaluations for asylum seekers; and supervises health professional students, providing psychoeducational interventions through the Behavioral Health Department at the Yale HAVEN Free Clinic. Her areas of professional interest include immigration and trauma, community-based mental health promotion for immigrant and refugee populations, and the role of social justice and advocacy in professional training and practice.

Kevin Swartout is a professor of psychology and public health, co-director of graduate studies at Georgia State University, and director of the Violence Against Women Prevention Lab. He also currently serves on the University Student Sexual Misconduct Board, as an executive member at the GSU Center for Interpersonal Violence, and chair of the Administrator-Researcher Campus Climate Collaborative. Kevin has received early career awards from Georgia State University and the Southeastern Psychological Association, and he was named Consulting Editor of the Year for Psychology of Violence in 2017. He graduated with a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2011.Kevin’s research interests and specializations include the social correlates of violence, with an emphasis on sexual violence, how alcohol and substance use relate to violent behaviors, and longitudinal data analysis using latent variable and multilevel regression techniques.  In his time away from research, teaching, and service roles related to violence prevention, Kevin enjoys hiking and biking with family and friends.