Demar F. Lewis IV is an Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland. Demar is also an affiliate faculty member in the Department of African American and Africana Studies. He is a sociologist and critical criminologist trained in Black Studies and public policy whose research examines how historical and contemporary notions of safety influence the ways that Black people organize their lives. This has led Dr. Lewis to develop multiple research studies to advance understandings of how racial violence, police violence, and resource deprivation influence perceptions of safety in the United States in the past and present.
His current projects examine (1) the influence of gentrification and resource deprivation on policing practices and Black Americans’ perceptions of community safety in Cincinnati, (2) the evolution of the “defund” mandate in U.S. politics, (3) the health consequences of carceral violence and racism in the U.S., and (4) the causes and consequences of U.S. lynchings. To pursue his research agenda, Demar uses historical methods, qualitative interviews, statistical analyses, and computational methods. Demar joined the third cohort of HPRS in 2018. While an HPRS Scholar, he also received awards and honors associated with his involvement in the inaugural cohort of the Spencer Cohort of the Institute for Critical, Quantitative, Computational, & Mixed Methodologies, Yale University’s Institution for Social and Policy Studies, the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society, and the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
Demar holds a B.A. in International Business & a minor in American Culture and Difference Studies from the University of St. Thomas-MN, a Master’s of Public Policy (MPP) from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, and a PhD in Sociology and African American Studies from Yale University. He is a former McNair Scholar and Associate Fellow with the Institute for the Recruitment of Teachers, and currently serves on the advisory board of the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Program at the University of Maryland.
