Kirsten Besemer

Kirsten Besemer is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University. Her research examines the social consequences of imprisonment, particularly focusing on families and communities, and she directs the university's Higher Degree Research (HDR) program in Criminology and Criminal Justice.

• Education:
  • PhD, University of Liverpool (2012)
  • Master of Science, University of Bath (2005)
  • Bachelor of Arts (with distinction), University College Utrecht (2004)

Her research interests include parental incarceration, policy evaluation, quantitative data analysis, and social exclusion. Recent work explores community dynamics in post-prisoner reentry and rising female imprisonment rates. She has secured significant funding, including an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant (2022-2026) for 'Lifting the burden of imprisonment: Creating safer and stronger communities' and internal Griffith grants for community-based imprisonment studies.

Dr. Besemer supervises multiple PhD projects at Griffith University, addressing topics like financial hardship in prisoner families, wrongful conviction consequences, and community imprisonment impacts. She contributes to criminology through publications in journals like Journal of Quantitative Criminology and edited handbooks, with methodological strengths in Bayesian modeling and longitudinal data analysis.

Her work aligns with UN Sustainable Development Goals (e.g., Reduced Inequalities, Peace and Justice) and is disseminated through the Griffith Criminology Institute, where she is a member since 2016.