Rachel Ellis joins the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice as an assistant professor in the fall of 2020. Her research focuses on gender and punishment. She uses qualitative methods to examine women’s experiences of prison and reentry, with particular attention to the role of religion in the criminal justice system. Her research has received recognition and awards from the American Sociological Association, the American Society of Criminology, and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Her work has been supported by grants and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Association for the Sociology of Religion, the Louisville Institute, the National Science Foundation, the Religious Research Association, the University of Missouri Research Board, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Ellis earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania, and started her career at the University of Missouri-St. Louis before joining UMD.