The University of Maryland's Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice is proud to announce the recipients of the Annual Dr. Anat Kimchi Graduate Student Awards for the academic year 2026-2027. These awards, supported by the Kimchi Family and the Department, serve as a heartfelt tribute to the memory and legacy of Dr. Anat Kimchi, a beloved University of Maryland graduate student in Criminology and Criminal Justice who was tragically killed in 2021. This endowment memorializes her passion for quantitative empirical research related to racial inequality, recidivism, social justice, or the study of formal institutions of social control.
In this year's selection, we honor the outstanding work of two exceptional graduate students, each making significant contributions to the field of criminology and criminal justice. In making these awards, the Kimchi Family and the Department preserve the memory of Dr. Kimchi’s life and accomplishments.
The Kimchi Memorial Graduate Student Awardee: Jane (Jae Eun) Lee
Jane (Jae Eun) Lee, the recipient of the Dr. Anat Kimchi Memorial Graduate Award, is a CCJS doctoral candidate whose project aims to identify, examine, and longitudinally track patterns of cumulative disadvantage in the juvenile justice system. Highlighting the unique legal and social circumstances of juvenile defendants, Lee argues that sentencing inequalities begin and accumulate in ways that are similar yet substantively different from those of adult defendants, warranting further investigation into juvenile-specific case processing decisions. This project advances research on the cumulative disadvantage framework and contributes to the discussion on sanction disparities for system-involved youth.
Jane conveyed her appreciation, noting, “I am incredibly grateful and honored to receive the Dr. Anat Kimchi Memorial Research Graduate Award. The funding will be used to support the advancement of my dissertation research over the summer and to participate in statistical workshops on structural equation modeling. I hope that this project on cumulative disadvantage in the juvenile justice system can help carry on Dr. Kimchi's passion for studying and combating social injustice within legal contexts.”
The Kimchi Memorial Graduate Student Travel Awardee: Frank Donohue
Frank Donohue, the recipient of the Dr. Anat Kimchi Travel Award, is a CCJS doctoral candidate researching how the specific gentrification pathway of a neighborhood alters its crime trajectory. His dissertation, The Life Course of a Neighborhood: Considering the Nuanced Relationship Between Gentrification and Crime, seeks to move beyond simplistic criminological framings of gentrification as a single process – typically through a binary “gentrifying or not” variable – that assumes that all neighborhoods have the same history and occupy the same stage of gentrification. Frank’s dissertation aims to be among the first to consider a more nuanced theoretical and empirical relationship between gentrification and crime change at the neighborhood level, recognizing that whether a community experiences crime surges or reductions is contingent on where that place finds itself in the gentrification process. Frank leverages an eight-category taxonomy of gentrification to assess neighborhood crime change across a diverse sample of cities by using the National Neighborhood Crime Study Panel Dataset. This taxonomy better appreciates the dynamism that is inherent to gentrification.
Frank shared his appreciation, saying: “I want to express my sincere gratitude to the Kimchi Memorial Graduate Award Committee and the Kimchi Family for recognizing me with the Dr. Anat Kimchi Memorial Graduate Travel Award. I will use this funding to attend the European Society of Criminology (ESC) Annual Meeting this September. Doing so will allow me to receive valuable feedback on my doctoral work and engage with international scholars who might think about gentrification through a different lens than American criminologists. I hope that findings from this dissertation can facilitate a broader understanding of how communities seeking to rise out of disadvantage can be equipped with resources and strategies to ward off impending crime, in doing so advancing research in Dr. Kimchi’s legacy aiming to improve
