Meet the Director
Dr. Neil Websdale
Professor Neil Websdale is Director of the Family Violence Center at Arizona State University and Director of the National Domestic Violence Fatality Review Initiative (NDVFRI). He has published work on domestic violence, the history of crime, policing, social change, and public policy.
More background
Dr. Websdale’s five books include: Rural Woman Battering and the Justice System: An Ethnography (Sage), 1998, which won the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Outstanding Book Award in 1999; Understanding Domestic Homicide (Northeastern University Press), 1999; Making Trouble: Cultural Constructions of Crime, Deviance, and Control (Aldine Books, co-edited with Jeff Ferrell), 1999; Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing (Northeastern University Press), 2001, winner of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Outstanding Book Award in 2002 and the Gustavus-Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Award in 2002. His latest book, Familicidal Hearts: The Emotional Styles of 211 Killers was published by Oxford University Press in 2010.
His extensive fatality review work has contributed to NDVFRI receiving the prestigious 2015 Mary Byron Foundation Celebrating Solutions Award. He has also worked on issues related to community policing, full faith and credit, and risk assessment and management in domestic violence cases. Dr. Websdale trained as a sociologist at the University of London, England and currently lives and works in Flagstaff, Arizona.