Research Affiliates

Dr. Brandon Allen is the Director of Research at the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security (NCS⁴) at The University of Southern Mississippi.  Dr. Allen is responsible for annual industry research reports, research seminar series, conducting academic scholarly research, managing the research affiliate program, and assisting with other duties and responsibilities pertaining to the mission and vision of NCS⁴. Dr. Allen comes to NCS⁴ from the College of Business and Economic Development, where he served as the Director of the Sport Management program and Associate Teaching Professor in the School of Marketing for over 15 years. 

Dr. Allen earned a Bachelor of Science in Physical Education from William Carey University (2003) and completed a Master of Science in Sport Management (2004) and a Ph.D.  in Human Performance with an emphasis in teaching and administration and a minor in Educational Statistics (2011) at The University of Southern Mississippi. He has since then completed the graduate certificate in Sport Security Management in 2016. Dr. Allen has collaborated with NCS⁴ from the early beginnings. His dissertation centered around Continuity of Operations Planning of NCAA Division I athletic departments. Since then, research areas have included fan perceptions of safety and security at sporting events, cost-effective ways of reducing school shootings/violence, rebranding of athletic logos, soft target hardening at sport venues, and feasibility studies of sport complexes. Dr. Allen is a veteran of the United States Navy serving aboard the USS Gettysburg CG-64 (’93-’96), and his hobbies include coaching baseball, hunting, fishing, and playing golf. 

Dr. Chris Croft is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management with the School of Marketing and College of Business and Economic Development at The University of Southern Mississippi. Additionally, he serves as the Sport Management Program and Graduate Coordinator. He is a two-time graduate of Southern Miss and transitioned to the sport management program after working with Southern Miss Basketball for three seasons, including as an assistant basketball coach during his last season. He has over 20 years of college basketball coaching experience, including the Big 12, PAC 10, and Big Ten Conferences. Croft, a native of Louisville, Mississippi, has coaching stops at Oklahoma State University, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Washington State University, the University of Texas El Paso, the University of Nebraska, and The University of Southern Mississippi. Additionally, he served as the Head Basketball Coach at Martin Methodist College on the NAIA level.

Croft’s research agenda focuses on intercollegiate athletics, coaching, sport marketing, and sport security. He has presented at international and national conferences, including the North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM), Collegiate Sport Research Institute (CSRI), Sport and Recreation Law Association (SRLA), Sport Entertainment & Venue Tomorrow (SEVT), Applied Sport Management Association (ASMA), Association of Marketing Theory and Practice (AMTP), and Society for Marketing Advances (SMA).

Croft holds a doctorate degree in Educational Leadership and Administration from the University of Texas El Paso. From The University of Southern Mississippi, he has a master’s degree in Human Performance, a graduate certificate in Sport Security Management, and a bachelor’s degree in Coaching and Sports Administration. 

Dr. Ali Fridley is an Assistant Professor of Sport Management at The University of Southern Mississippi. She earned her Ph.D. in Health, Sport, and Exercise Science with a concentration in Recreation and Sport Management from the University of Arkansas. Before the University of Arkansas, Dr. Fridley earned her BS in Recreation and Sport Management from Mars Hill University and her MA in Sport Administration from The University of Alabama. Prior to coming to The University of Southern Mississippi, she was an Assistant Professor at Northern State University. Her research, intertwined within sport safety and security, centers on athlete development and experience, sport marketing, and spectatorship.

Jon Garland is Professor of Criminology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey, where he is also Head of Department. He has conducted extensive research into hate crime, and in particular the nature, frequency and impact of victimization and how criminal justice agencies deal with incidents of hate crime. He has also examined the nature and impact of the targeted victimization of alternative subcultures. In addition, he has investigated the activities, impact and membership of far-right groups such as the English Defence League (EDL), as well as racism in rural and isolated areas of England, policing, and racism, anti-racism and disorder in football (soccer).

He has published six books: Rural Racism, Responding to Hate Crime: The Case for Connecting Policy and Research, and Hate Crime: Impact, Causes, and Consequences (all with Neil Chakraborti), Racism and Anti-racism in Football (with Mike Rowe); The Future of Football (with Mike Rowe and Dominic Malcolm), Youth Culture, Popular Music and the End of ‘Consensus’ (with the Subcultures Network). He has also had numerous journal articles and reports published on issues of racism, the far-right, hate crime, policing, cultural criminology, and identity. He is on the Editorial Board of Ethnic and Racial Studies. He is a Trustee of Stop Hate UK, on the Board of the International Network for Hate Studies and on the Steering Committee of the British Society of Criminology Hate Crime Network.

Dr. Kiernan Gordon is Assistant Professor of Sport and Recreation Management within the Department of Business at the University of New England. His research examines the role that emotion plays in sport spectators’ consumption of sport venues and related products. This focus includes a strong emphasis on the influence of security protocol and related technologies on the sport consumer experience, as well as emphases on sport venue design, fan behavior, and heritage sport tourism. He has presented at numerous international and national conferences, including the annual meetings for the North American Society for Sport Management, the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interactionism, and the American Sociological Association.

Dr. Gordon has held faculty appointments at Miami University (Ohio) and the University of New Hampshire and has published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals. In addition to serving NCS⁴ as a research affiliate, he has served as a guest speaker at a variety of institutions, including Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

A long-time, former men’s college basketball coach, Dr. Gordon holds a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University with a dual emphasis in sociocultural aspects of sport and sport management, an M.S. from High Point University in sport studies with a dual concentration in sport management and exercise science, and a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz in interpersonal processes of interaction, an independent major comprised of sociology, linguistics, and behavioral neuroscience coursework.

Laura Gulledge is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at The University of Southern Mississippi. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Criminology from the University of Florida. She also holds a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of South Florida. Her research interests include school crime and victimization, including security pertaining to youth sporting events. Other research interests include intervention strategies for juvenile offenders in diversion programs, co-occurring disorders in juvenile populations, and psychosocial risk factors associated with delinquency. Dr. Gulledge’s research has appeared in various journals including Criminal Justice & Behavior, Deviant Behavior, Journal of Crime and Justice, Criminal Justice Policy Review, Journal of Child and Adolescent Substance Abuse, and Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. She frequently presents at the annual meetings of the American Society of Criminology as well as the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Dr. Gulledge teaches the juvenile law module to police recruits at the Southern Regional Public Safety Institute at Camp Shelby. Currently, she is teaching courses at USM on juvenile justice, juvenile corrections, and juvenile law. Last year, she was nominated for the College of Science and Technology Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award.

Dr. Hall played an integral role in the creation of the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security and served as the Associate Director from 2006-2014. She continued to serve the institution through various leadership roles, including Interim Associate Dean of the College of Health, Chair of the Department of Economic Development, Tourism, and Sport Management, and most recently as Executive Associate Dean for the College of Business and Economic Development.

Dr. Hall’s expertise is in the area of sport safety and security management. She has published in leading international sport management, homeland security, and emergency management journals and has co-authored two textbooks – Sport Facility Operations Management and Security Management for Sports and Special Events. Additionally, she has been invited to publish in national magazines such as Athletic Management, Athletic Administration, and Security Magazine. Dr. Hall has been referred to as one of the nation’s leading experts in sport security with interviews in USA Today, ESPN the Magazine, CBS New York, and also appeared on a live national broadcast of ESPN’s Outside the Lines. Dr. Hall was one of 150 experts from across the globe invited to attend the first International Sport Security Conference in Doha, Qatar. Dr. Hall has presented at international and national conferences, and conducted invited presentations for U.S. federal and state agencies, college athletic conferences, and professional sport leagues, including Major League Soccer (MLS). 

Dr. Hall has been the principal investigator on external grant awards in excess of $4M. Funded projects included awards from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to develop risk management curriculum for sport security personnel at NCAA institutions, conduct risk assessments at college sport stadia, and develop training programs for sport venue staff. Dr. Hall has also been involved in several service projects including the development of a risk assessment tool for U.S. sport stadia in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security and International Association of Venue Managers; development of a disaster mitigation plan post-Katrina for the Mississippi Regional Housing Authority; and development of a sport safety and security system for a K-12 school district in Houston, TX.

Dr. Hall teaches undergraduate and graduate sport management courses in economics, finance, and security. She developed a graduate level emphasis area in sport security management for the Master’s program at Southern Miss. Dr. Hall has completed threat/risk assessment training through the National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center; terrorist bombing training through New Mexico Tech Energetic Materials and Testing Center; and special events contingency planning for public safety agencies training through the FEMA Emergency Management Institute.

Dr. Hall played soccer at Southern Miss from 1997-2001 and holds the record for most goals scored. She was inducted into the Southern Miss Sports Hall of Fame in 2013. She also captained the Northern Ireland International Soccer Team until her retirement in 2008.

Joshua B. Hill is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at The University of Southern Mississippi and a Fellow at the Office of Global Perspectives and Metropolitan Center at the University of Central Florida. His research areas focus on homeland security and terrorism, with a particular interest in terrorist targeting and event-based analysis. Dr. Hill previously worked for the Institute for the Study of Violent Groups as a lead analyst where he was in charge of the research arm of the Institute. In addition to his current faculty role at The University of Southern Mississippi, Dr. Hill serves as the Master’s Coordinator for the School of Criminal Justice. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, a Master of Arts Degree in Criminal Justice and Criminology from Sam Houston State University, and a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice, also from Sam Houston State University. He is the co-author of Homeland Security in America with Nancy Marion and Will Oliver, and Introduction to Cybercrime, as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters.

Laurajean (Lj) Holmgren is the Deputy Program Director, Sports Management, and a part-time Lecturer in the Master of Science, Sports Management at Columbia University. LJ graduated from the State University of New York, College at Cortland with a bachelor’s degree in Sport Management, an MBA from St. John’s University, and an MS in Applied Analytics from Columbia University. Her research interests focus on sport security, athlete branding, marketing, and the commercial aspects of the Olympic and Paralympic Movement.

Brad R. Humphreys is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Research and a professor of economics in the Department of Economics, John T. Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University. He previously held faculty positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Alberta. His research on the economics and financing of professional sports, including crime and sports, and the economics of gambling has been published in academic journals in economics and policy analysis, including the Journal of Urban Economics, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Journal of Regional Science, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Regional Science and Urban Economics. He has published more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals in economics and public policy. He is Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Economic Policy, a general interest economics journal, and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Sports Economics, the International Journal of Sport Finance, the International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, and International Gambling Studies. He became Benedum Distinguished Scholar in Behavioral and Social Sciences at West Virginia University in 2017. In March 2019, he was elected as Vice President of the Eastern Economic Association and served as President in 2021-2022.

Dr. Wanda E. Leal is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Sam Houston State University.. She received her Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Florida State University. Her research interests include substance use, sports and deviance, criminological theory, and life-course criminology.

Dr. Brian Menaker is an Associate Professor, Interim Associate Department Chair, and the Kinesiology Graduate Program Coordinator at Texas A&M University – Kingsville, and a research affiliate at The University of Southern Mississippi’s National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security. His research interests include the impact of public policy on sport. His primary focus considers the intersection of spectator sport events and venues with public health and safety. This focus has supported a primary line related to sport venue and event law enforcement, public safety, and security planning. Additional interests include the impact of sporting events on crime and disorder in cities. He has presented his research at international conferences, including the World Association of Sport Management, Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand, Sport Recreation and Law Association, North American Society for Sport Management, American Society of Criminology, and American Public Health Association. Published manuscripts have appeared in peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Sport Safety and Security, Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, Journal of Global Sport Management, VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations. He also serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics.

Dr. Menaker holds a B.A. in History from Grinnell College, an M.A. in Sport Studies from the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. in Health and Human Performance with a concentration in Sport Management from the University of Florida. Prior to his career in academia, Dr. Menaker previously coached cross country and track and field at the intercollegiate level and worked in sport event and facility management at the University of Iowa. Menaker founded the Community Organization Planning Research (COPR) Initiative, which focuses on non-profit community organizational effectiveness.

Dr. Panos Patros is interested in various aspects of Software Engineering but in particular, Self-Adaptation in Clouds, Language Runtimes and Embedded Systems, focusing on the Testing and Satisfaction of Nonfunctional Requirements as well as Systems’ Security. He joined the Department of Computer Science of the University of Waikato in July 2018 as a Lecturer; soon after, he started the Oceania Researchers in Cloud and Adaptive-systems (ORCA) lab. Additionally, he is serving as an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick in Canada.

Dr. Patros received his Bachelors in Informatics and Telecommunications from the University of Athens in 2010. He worked for four years as a Software Engineer, Consultant and Academic Tutor before moving to Canada and the University of New Brunswick for graduate school. He completed his Master’s in Computer Science in 2014 and his Ph.D. in 2018, both as a member of the IBM/UNB Centre of Advanced Studies – Atlantic. While in Canada, he taught CS courses (after completing a Diploma in University Teaching in 2014) and participated in industrial R&D projects.

For his BSc thesis, Panos constructed a converter of Conjunctive Grammars (Context-Free plus Intersection) to their respective automata and vice-versa. For his master’s thesis, he enhanced the IBM J9 JVM with a tool that measured thread-park contention in the Java Util Concurrent library. For his Ph.D. thesis, he explored numerous performance, modelling and resource allocation issues in the intersection of platform clouds and language runtimes, in a work that also resulted into two patents and four defensive anti-patent disclosures. He is also a member of the Verilog-To-Routing FPGA CAD tool open source community, where he contributes and conducts research related to improved synthesis of circuits for embedded systems.

Dr. Alex R. Piquero has published over 475 peer-reviewed articles in the areas of criminal careers, crime prevention, criminological theory, and quantitative research methods. He has collaborated on several books, including Key Issues in Criminal Careers Research: New Analyses from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (Cambridge University Press, co-authored with David P. Farrington and Alfred Blumstein), Handbook of Quantitative Criminology (Springer, co-edited by David Weisburd), and in 2020 he co-authored Developmental Criminology and the Crime-drop: A Comparative Analysis of Criminal Careers in Two Birth Cohorts (Cambridge University Press, with Jason Payne). His work has been cited over 50,000 times (h-index=118), and he has been ranked as the #1 criminologist in the world since 1996 in terms of scholarly publications in elite criminology/criminal justice journals. A 2019 article in Plos Biology identified him as being included among the top 100,000 most-cited scientists in the world. In November 2019 and November 2020, he was recognized by the Web of Science Group as one of the world’s most influential researchers (i.e., a Highly Cited Researcher).

In addition to his membership on over a dozen editorial boards of journals in criminology and sociology, he has also served as Executive Counselor with the American Society of Criminology, Member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel Evaluating the National Institute of Justice, Member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on A Prioritized Plan to Implement a Developmental Approach in Juvenile Justice Reform, Member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Modernizing the Nation’s Crime Statistics, Member of the Racial Democracy, Crime and Justice Network at Ohio State University, and Member of the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on Adolescent Development & Juvenile Justice.

Professor Piquero has given congressional testimony on evidence-based crime prevention practices in the area of early-family/parent training programs and has provided counsel and support to several local, state, national, and international criminal justice agencies, including various police and correctional agencies. In 2015, United States Attorney General Eric Holder appointed him to the Office of Justice Programs Science Advisory Board. In September 2019, Dallas City Mayor Eric Johnson appointed him to the Mayor’s Task Force on Safe Communities, and Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot appointed him as a member of the DA’s Urban Crime Initiative. In December 2020, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine F. Rundle appointed Dr. Piquero to the Executive Committee of the Continuing Justice Reform Commission. In March 2021, he was elected to the Council on Criminal Justice, and in April 2021, he was appointed to the Science Advisory Board of the Melissa Institute in Miami, Florida. Professor Piquero is a past recipient of the American Society of Criminology’s Young Scholar (2002) and E-Mail Mentor of the Year (2005) Awards, Fellow of both the American Society of Criminology (2011) and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (2011), recipient of the Western Society of Criminology President’s Award (2017), recipient of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Bruce Smith, Sr. Award (2019), recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Division of Developmental & Life-Course Criminology of the American Society of Criminology (2020) and has also received numerous teaching awards including the University of Florida’s College of Arts & Sciences Teacher of the Year Award (2004), the University of Maryland’s Top Terp Teaching Award (2008), the University of Texas Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award (2014), as well as the University of Texas at Dallas Diversity Award. In 2018, he was named to The University of Texas System’s Academy of Distinguished Teachers. Professor Piquero has served on a large number of departmental, school, college, and University committees, including most recently Co-Chair of the UT-Dallas Committee on Qualifications (i.e., University tenure and promotion committee).

Dr. Hyunwoong Pyun is an assistant professor in the Department of Sport Science at Sungkyunkwan University, Korea, and a research affiliate at the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security at The University of Southern Mississippi. His research interests include sports and health-related urban policy evaluation. Dr. Pyun applies various modern empirical strategies based on econometric techniques that fall under the general classification of “causal inference” methods to deal with issues of endogeneity and drive the causal relationship. For example, the relationship between sporting events and crime. He has published several peer-reviewed articles on aspects of sports safety and security in the Journal of Regional Science, Empirical Economics, Applied Economics, and Journal of Sports Economics.

Dr. Pyun holds a B.S.S. and M.S.S. degree in physical education from Seoul National University, Korea, and an M.A. in economics from the University of Alberta, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in economics from West Virginia University.

Dr. Alina Ristea is Postdoctoral Research Associate for the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI), part of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University. She is currently involved in various research projects regarding urban science – understanding cities. Her interests include, but are not limited to, spatial crime analysis, sporting events and crime occurrences, social media mining, predictive analytics, safety perception, neighborhood analysis, GIScience, and urban informatics.

Dr. Ristea received her Ph.D. from the Department of Geoinformatics Z_GIS from the University of Salzburg (Austria). Her dissertation entitled the “Integration and Evaluation of Social Media in Crime Prediction Models” focused on geospatial predictive crime analysis through an exploration of the complex parameters of social media data and additional sociodemographic status as well as safety risk factors. The overall goal of this work was to identify significant social media information and how to best operationalize it in spatial and spatiotemporal crime prediction models. A narrower focus of this research related more specifically to crowd-based events, thus facilitating the exploration of three core elements: crime, social media and sporting events. The main thrust of which was on forecasting both the place and time that crime happens at these events, along with what specific type of crime might occur.

Prior to her Ph.D. studies, Dr. Ristea received her Bachelor’s from the University of Bucharest (Romania) in Geography and Cartography. After her Bachelor’s, she did a two year Masters in GIS (Geographic Information Systems), also at the University of Bucharest. Following her graduate work, Dr. Ristea worked for two years on a research team at the National Meteorological Administration in Bucharest, focusing on the GIS and remote sensing side of numerous research projects.

Brian P. Schaefer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice and teaches in the criminology and criminal justice, cybercriminology and security studies, and intelligence analysis degree programs. His research interests focus on policing, particularly police culture, police investigations, police violence and violence towards the police, police technologies, and police training. Current projects include an evaluation of a police department’s adoption of body-worn cameras and the examination of how misdemeanor offenses affect local criminal justice systems. He is a member of the Research Network for Misdemeanor Justice at John Jay College and a Commonwealth Scholar at the Commonwealth Institute of Kentucky at the University of Louisville. He has published numerous technical reports, book chapters, and articles published in journals such as Theoretical Criminology, Deviant Behavior, and British Journal of Criminology. He is also co-author of The Police and Society (4th Edition). He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from McKendree University, a Master of Science Degree in Criminal Justice from Eastern Kentucky University, and a Ph.D. in Justice Administration from the University of Louisville.

Derya Tekin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law, at İstanbul Medeniyet University, School of Law. She earned her Bachelor of Laws from Ankara University, Turkey. She holds a Master of Laws in International Criminal Law from the University of Sussex, UK. Dr. Tekin received a Ph.D. in Law from Queen’s University Belfast, UK. Her thesis entitled “An Evaluation of Situational Crime Prevention in Football in Turkey” examined fans’ perceptions of situational crime prevention techniques in the Turkish soccer context. Within the scope of her Ph.D., sponsored by the Turkish government, Tekin undertook fieldwork with the representatives of the fan Fenerbahçe soccer team fan groups in 2015 in İstanbul, Turkey. Her research interests focus on sport security, criminal law, medical criminal law, criminology, crime prevention, criminal reconciliation, and qualitative evaluation.

Dr. Yuanyuan Zhang is an Assistant Professor at the School of Construction and Design at The University of Southern Mississippi (USM). Dr. Zhang is also a Research Professor at the School of Construction and Design at USM.

Dr. Zhang received her Ph.D. degree in Transportation Planning and Management from Tongji University in 2012 and was funded as an exchange Ph.D. student at University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) for two years. After her graduation, she subsequently worked at UC Berkeley as a Post-Doctoral Researcher. In 2016, she joined The University of Southern Mississippi and lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Dr. Zhang has extensive research experience in various areas of transportation engineering, planning, and management, including transportation safety, network analysis, and crowd pedestrian studies. Her current research interests include: transportation safety, system resiliency, transportation related economic development, and machine learning applications in planning and design. Her current research project on uses deep learning to automatically collect pedestrian facility data and is funded by the Federal Highway Administration through National Academy of Sciences. This project marks the first time this grant comes to the state of Mississippi in its 20-year history. Dr. Zhang also teaches several undergraduate courses at the University, including AEC 390 Engineering Economy and AEC 270 Statics and Strengths of Materials.