Vanessa Massaro

I have been teaching at Georgetown since 2020.

Bio and Featured Works

I'm a geography professor at Bucknell University and I ran the Center for Social Science Research there for 4 years. In that role, I helped design and oversee a methods course for our Social Science students. I have an interdisciplinary PhD in Geography from Penn State University. Prior to that, I completed my MA at the University of Arizona and a BS at Penn State - all in geography! My primary research focus is on the impacts of imprisonment on the economy and communities in the United States. I am currently working on a mixed methods project studying the role of algorithms in criminal justice funding through a Google Inclusion Grant. My research has been published in several peer-reviewed forums including Big Data and Society, ACME, Environment and Planning C and Antipode. One component of my research is methodologies - that is, simply put, researching how to do research.

I have extensive experience in qualitative and mixed methods projects and mentoring graduate and undergraduate student projects that deploy said methods. I am excited to bring my "real world" experience in research design, spatial methods, qualitative and quantitative study to Georgetown.

About Vanessa Massaro

Expertise

Carceral Technology and Algorithms
Local Government and Urban Policy
Mixed Methods Research Methodology
Prison and Justice
Qualitative Research Methods
Urban Studies