Victim Researcher Profile

BIO

Rachel E. Lovell, PhD (The Ohio State University, Sociology, 2007), is an Assistant Professor of Criminology in the Department of Criminology and Sociology and Director of the Criminology Research Center at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio. She is an applied criminologist and methodologist whose research focuses on gender-based violence and victimization, particularly sexual assault, human trafficking, and intimate partner violence. Since 2015, Dr. Lovell has been the Principal Investigator on several large action research projects on untested sexual assault kits in collaboration with the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, the Akron Police Department, and the Cleveland Division of Police with funding provided by the Department of Justice's Sexual Assault Kit Initiative. As an extension of the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, she serves as the lead researcher on the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office’s Lawfully “Owed” DNA Initiative. Dr. Lovell is also the Principal Investigator on a National Institute of Justice grant to employ machine learning technology to analyze the narratives of thousands of sexual assault police reports for "signaling" language regarding a victim's credibility. She is an established scholar with over $6 million in external funding in the last nine years and several dozen peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. Her research has been featured in The Atlantic, Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, Pro Publica, and Sports Illustrated.

VICTIMIZATION FOCUS

SPECIAL POPULATIONS

Child victims, LGBTQ victims, Male victims generally

RESEARCH EXPERTISE

Action research, Community-based participatory research, Data collection, Program evaluation, Qualitative studies, Quantitative studies, Quasi-experimental studies

VICTIM RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

Action research, Community-based participatory research, Data collection, Program evaluation, Qualitative studies, Quantitative studies, Quasi-experimental studies