I am a Professor at Georgia State University in the Department of CJ and Criminology and a faculty affiliate of the GSU Center for Research on Interpersonal Violence (CRIV). I am also an external affiliate of the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE) at the University of Washington, where previously I was an assistant to associate professor in the Department of Sociology. I received my Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Georgia. Over the past five years, I have been training in genomics, statistical genetics, and epigenetics with a fellowship from the NIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

My areas of interest include crime and inequality; criminological theories, especially developmental and life-course criminology; racial disparities in crime and health-risk behaviors; sex, gender, crime, law, & society; social science genetics; and meta-science.

Much of my work has focused on explaining disparities in crime and health-risk behaviors. I seek to explain why some people who face challenging life circumstances (poverty, abuse, discrimination, dangerous environments) often respond in ways that seem to exacerbate their situations. My research is motivated by the desire to understand how experiences of social adversity, profoundly shaped by social position, influence development and risky behavior, focusing on psychosocial orientations that induce “choices” shaping short-sighted behavior and perpetuating inequalities.

In this line of work, I have examined a number of social risk and protective factors for criminal and health-risk behaviors, including racial discrimination, racial socialization, supportive parenting, community crime, and deviant peers. A related line of research focuses on stability and change in social schemas associated with health-risk and reckless behaviors in adolescence and emerging adulthood. For example, in a 2017 study published in Criminology, I developed and tested a life-course model illuminating the individual mechanisms and social pathways through which childhood exposure increases the risk of adult crime while highlighting the enduring protective effects of familial racial socialization. Earlier works explored these processes in adolescence (American Sociological Review, 2012), investigated the individual mechanisms through which racial socialization buffers the effects of crime (Social Problems, 2017), and examined sex/gender differences in these processes (Justice Quarterly, 2015). In other research, I explore the development, stability, and effects of social factors and interventions on self-control processes and their relationship to crime.

In prior work, I have debated the merits of heritability studies in sociology, discussed gene-environment interplay, and future directions for biopsychosocial scholarship. With the support of a Mentored Research Scientist Development K01 award from NICHD (2018-2023), I am currently studying genomics in order to incorporate gene-environment interplay (esp. epigenetic mechanisms of embodiment) into my research. In several recently published and forthcoming pieces, I have explored the complexities of polygenic scores (PGSs) and the challenges accompanying their use in social science.

I have a longstanding interest in socio-legal issues around sex and gender, with a particular interest in how gender–as a set of social norms imposed on male and female bodies–limits the full humanity of males and females and constrains female bodies in subordinate (caregiving, passive) roles. In my first research project, which started as an undergrad with one of my mentors as the lead, we examined how rape law reforms influenced rape reporting over time. In my master’s thesis, I examined how gender norms influence sex differences in responses to stress and the sex gap in delinquency. In recent years, I have scrutinized the science around sex, gender, and gender identity, as well as proposed policy changes that would eliminate distinctions between sex and gender identity in the law.

Finally, I have a burgeoning interest in the philosophy of science and meta-science or critical science studies. Notably, my interest in critical science studies is not of the deconstructionist type but of the skeptical, attentive, debunking, precise, “getting-closer-to-the-facts” type, which is, in my view, what science is about. After all, “if you do not try to check ideas by trying to debunk them, you are not practicing science” (Rauch 1993). 

My scholarship has been published in various outlets, including the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Annual Review of Criminology, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Criminology, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, PLOS Biology, Social Forces, and Social Problems.  In 2014 I was awarded the Ruth Shonle Cavan “Young Scholar” Award from the American Society of Criminology. Somewhat recently, I was interviewed about my criminology research on The Criminology Academy podcast, which can be found here: https://thecrimacademy.podbean.com/e/ep-callie-burt-sst-and-new-directions-for-crim/ (and other places where you find podcasts).

You can find me on Twitter @callie_h_burt