Kristin Swartz, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Louisville. She earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati and joined the University of Louisville in 2012. Her overall research agenda concentrates on understanding how various contexts influence individual outcomes. The contexts in which she is especially interested in include: both institutional and community correctional contexts, neighborhoods, and schools.

Most of her recent work has focused on correctional contexts with the aim of understanding and addressing the effects of stress, especially the chronic exposure to violence and trauma on correctional staff's mental and physical health, occupational satisfaction, relationships with their families, and their overall quality of life. In a partnership with the Kentucky Department of Corrections, her recent National Institute of Justice funded project examined the effectiveness of a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program on reducing biological, psycological, and sociological measures of stress among correctional officers.

Across all contexts, she is interested in the development of cultures and how culture influences various individual outcomes including offending and victimization. 

Her teaching interests largely include corrections and criminological theory, with an emphasis on community-level theories. She especially enjoys teaching courses where the goal is to help students understand how theory and empirically-based research could and should inform policy and practice.