The Criminology Academy podcast featured Associate Professor Bersani in an episode titled "Ep. 60 Is It Just Teen Spirit? The Impact of Arrest in Early Adolescence with Bianca Bersani." In this episode, Professor Bersani discusses her work on life-course criminology, specifically the impacts of arrests on adolescents and their transition into adulthood.

Bianca Bersani is an associate professor in criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland and director of the Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center. She earned her BA and MA in sociology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her Ph.D. in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Maryland. Bianca’s research interests are broadly shaped by the life course perspective. Specifically, her work centers on examining patterns (e.g., trajectories) and processes related to offending across the life course with particular emphasis on how and why salient life events like marriage and arrest alter criminal offending trajectories and influence desistance from crime, the mechanisms that help to facilitate behavioral change over time, and how processes of change may be conditioned by one’s social position (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender, class, and immigrant generation) or socio-historical context. Another line of work focuses on examining and explaining the generational disparity in immigrant offending.

More information on the podcast can be found here. The podcast episode can be found on Apple Podcasts.