People - Center for the Study of Violence

Center for the Study of Violence

People

Craig A. Anderson

Director of the Center for the Study of Violence; Distinguished Professor

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Douglas A. Gentile

Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Violence; Assistant Professor

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Funded Faculty

Graduate Students

Brenda J. Lohman

Chris Barlett

Associate Professor, Director
of Graduate Education in HDFS

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Muniba Saleem

Jill D. Pruetz

msaleem @ iastate.edu

Walvoord Professor of Liberal Arts & Sciences

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Ted Swing

eswing @ iastate.edu

Kathleen Thomas

Associate Professor, University of Minnesota

Staff

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Brian Anderson

Nathaniel G. Wade

Assistant to the Director of the Center for the

Associate Professor

Study of Violence

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Faculty Affiliates

SOCIOLOGY

Matthew J. DeLisi

Professor and Coordinator of the
Criminal Justice Studies Program

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RELIGIOUS STUDIES

Hector Avalos

Professor
Specializes in Religious Violence

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Wikipedia Biography

Craig A. Anderson, Distinguished Professor
Dr. Anderson is widely considered a leading scholar on the
psychology of aggression. His research in recent years has focused
on media violence effects, especially violent video games. His
aggression research has appeared in all of the top psychology journals,
including the top public policy journal. He is currently funded by
multiple grants from the CDC and the National Institute of Child Health
and Human Development (NICHD). His work has had a major impact
on public policy at local, state, national and international levels.

Douglas A. Gentile, Assistant Professor
Dr. Gentile's research focuses on the effects of media on children and
adolescents. Much of his recent work concerns the effects of violent
video games. He is currently funded by the CDC, NICHD, and private foundations
for his research. His research has been published in numerous top journals in
psychology and medicine. He is the editor of the book Media violence and children: A
complete guide for parents and professionals (2003; Praeger Press) and is coauthor
of the book Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research and Public Policy. (2007; Oxford University Press)

Brenda J. Lohman, Assistant Professor
Dr. Lohman is a developmental psychologist whose primary interests concern: successful
academic and psychosocial adjustment of adolescents, especially those from
economically disadvantaged minority communities; family and ecological systems
theories; applied or policy-relevant research. She is currently working on a project that is
funded in part by a violence grant to Craig Anderson by the CDC; the project title is
"Exploring the Antecedents and Consequences of Late Adolescent Dating Violence."

Jill Pruetz, Assistant Professor
Dr. Pruetz is specializing in Biological Anthropology. As a primatologist, Dr. Pruetz has
studied the behavior of non-human primates such as chimpanzees, spider monkeys,
howling monkeys, tamarins, patas monkeys, and vervets in various locales. Dr. Pruetz is
especially interested in the influence of ecology on primate and early human feeding,
ranging, and social behavior. She currently has a research project in southeastern Senegal
which has been funded by National Geographic Society, the Leakey Foundation, Wenner-Gren
Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the National Science Foundation, among others.
The goal of this ongoing project is study or conduct research on companzees in a habitat similar to
that of early hominids or bipedal apes. She is also currently working on a project that was funded in
part by a violence grant to Craig Anderson by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC);
the project title is "Demonic Males: How Valid is a Sociobiological Model of Human Aggression?"

Nathaniel Wade, Associate Professor
Dr. Wade's research focuses on the concept of forgiveness, and its relationship on conflict
and conflict resolution in interpersonal relationships. He has completed a project that was funded in part by a
violence grant to Craig Anderson by the CDC. The report of that study is currently in preparation and is titled
"Comparison of Brief Group Treatments to Promote Forgiveness: A Randomized Clinical Trial." He is currently working on a similar research project, funded by the Fetzer Institute, titled "Attachement Style, Group Cohesiveness, and the Effects of Interventions to Promote Forgiveness."

Matthew J. DeLisi, Assistant Professor, Coordinator of the Criminal Justice Program
Dr. DeLisi’s primary research area deals with criminal careers, particularly the
identification, measurement, and incapacitation of habitual/pathological offenders.
Additional research areas are race, crime, and criminal justice, and testing criminological
theory.

Kathleen Thomas, Associate Professor
Dr. Thomas' primary research explores the development of learning during the
preeschool and school age periods. She is also interested in the role of implicit or unaware
processes regarding emotion, as well as understanding facial expressions of emotion
in children.

Hector Avalos, Professor
Dr. Hector Avalos, Professor of Religious Studies, specializes in religious violence. Trained as
both an anthropologist and as a biblical scholar, Avalos is interested in the history of explanations
for violence in modern academia. He is the author of Fighting Words: The Origins of
Religious Violence (2005, Prometheus Books), which outlines a new theory for the origin and nature
of religious violence. Fighting Words also explored the ways in which the modern profession of biblical
scholarship sanitizes violence found in sacred scriptures. The book was featured on National Public
Radio's Talk of the Nation in 2005, and it has become required reading in many colleges and
universities that have courses on religious violence. An internationally-recognized critic of Intelligent
Design Creationism, Dr. Avalos is currently exploring creationist claims that evolutionary
theory was a primary factor in the Nazi Holocaust.