Leanne Trapedo Sims

Leanne Trapedo Sims is the Daniel J. Logan Assistant Professor of Peace and Justice at Knox College, where she is founding program director and shaping an interdisciplinary curriculum. Her research focuses on gender, Indigeneity, violence, and state power in colonized contexts, particularly through her ethnographic work at Hawai‘i’s Women’s Correctional Community Center. She is author of the forthcoming book Reckoning with Restorative Justice: Hawai‘i Women’s Prison Writing (Duke University Press, 2022). At Knox, she is building an Inside-Out Prison Exchange program with Henry C. Hill Correctional Center and establishing a Restorative Justice Laboratory to address mass incarceration and reparative justice in partnership with local activists and impacted communities.

Her research interests bridge feminist theory, decolonial studies, and carceral system critique. Recent publications include analyses of gendered violence and carceral systems in Signs (2020) and Frontiers (2018). She actively engages in prison activism and coalition-building in Philadelphia and the Midwest.

As program director, Trapedo Sims teaches at introductory and advanced levels, integrating academic and community-based approaches. Her Restorative Justice Lab will serve as an incubator for collaborative projects with artists, advocates, and justice-impacted families in Galesburg and Chicago.