Maryland Population Research Center

Assistant Professor
Criminology and Criminal Justice
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742

Email: dkirk@umd.edu
Phone: 301-405-1759
Office: 2220J LeFrak Hall

CV

Publications

Grants

Recent Scientific Accomplishments

Kirk’s research focuses primarily on the influence of social context, particularly neighborhoods, on crime and violence. For instance, in his dissertation, Kirk examined the relative and joint impacts of school social organization and neighborhood social organization on both criminal outcomes and educational outcomes. Part of this research was published in 2006 in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, with additional articles currently under review. Kirk received awards for his dissertation scholarship from the American Society of Criminology and the Crime, Law and Deviance section of the American Sociological Association. Beyond his dissertation research, Kirk has been active with co-author Andrew Papachristos in an ongoing investigation of the social predictors of neighborhood violence in Chicago. In a study published in an edited volume titled Studying Youth Gangs (edited by J.F. Short Jr. and L.A. Hughes), Kirk and Papachristos provide one of the first investigations of the neighborhood effects on street gang violence across a large variety of neighborhood types. In addition to pursuing the research areas outlined above, during graduate school Kirk was a project team member of two large-scale social science research projects. The first, The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (Felton Earls, PI), is an interdisciplinary research project designed to understand how families, schools, and neighborhoods influence child and adolescent development. Kirk continues to be involved with the project. The second project, Demographic Reconstruction in Post-Khmer-Rouge Cambodia (Patrick Heuveline, PI), is designed to examine the determinants of demographic change in Cambodia from the 1980s onward.

Funded Research

Kirk’s dissertation research was funded by the National Institute of Justice, The Spencer Foundation, the National Consortium on Violence Research, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Funding for his research on the neighborhood context of street gang violence (with Co-PI Andrew Papachristos) was obtained from the National Science Foundation through the National Consortium on Violence Research.

Future Research Plans

During the next few years, Kirk’s research will continue to focus on the effects of neighborhood context on behavioral outcomes, with a particular emphasis on racial and ethnic differences in criminal outcomes. He has four current and future projects related to this agenda. In one project, he seeks to describe and compare patterns of prisoner reentry in the State of Louisiana pre- and post- hurricane Katrina. For the second study, Kirk is examining the neighborhood context of racial and ethnic disparities in arrest. Similarly with the third project, he is examining the differentials in the duration of exposure to neighborhood violence across racial and ethnic groups, and repercussions on future criminal behavior. For the fourth project, Kirk is comparing the structural and cultural predictors of neighborhood violence. He has a proposal currently pending review for funding at NIJ for this work.

Maryland Population Research Center
0124N Cole Student Activities Building (#162)
College Park, MD 20742
Phone: 301-405-6403
Fax: 301-405-5743