APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS:

• CURRENT PENN STATE EMPLOYEE (faculty, staff, technical service, or student), please login to Workday to complete the internal application process. Please do not apply here, apply internally through Workday.

• CURRENT PENN STATE STUDENT (not employed previously at the university) and seeking employment with Penn State, please login to Workday to complete the student application process. Please do not apply here, apply internally through Workday.

• If you are NOT a current employee or student, please click “Apply” and complete the application process for external applicants.

 

Approval of remote and hybrid work is not guaranteed regardless of work location. For additional information on remote work at Penn State, see Notice to Out of State Applicants.

This is a term position; length of the term will be discussed during the interview process. Continuation past the term length discussed will be based on university need, performance, and/or availability of funding.

 

POSITION SPECIFICS

The Criminal Justice Research Center (CJRC) and Department of Sociology and Criminology at The Pennsylvania State University invite applications for a Postdoctoral Scholar position to begin in the Fall of 2026, with flexibility. The CJRC supports innovative criminal justice research focused on the connections between research, policy, and practice. The successful applicant will collaborate with Dr. Miranda A. Galvin in the Department of Sociology and Criminology on an ongoing mixed method study pertaining to pretrial detention, charge bargaining, racial and contextual disparity, and sentencing.

 

Applications are encouraged from both current Ph.D. candidates and scholars who have completed the Ph.D. within the past two years. Note that an earned doctorate in the social or behavioral sciences by the time of appointment is required.

Preference will be given to candidates with advanced training in statistics, experience working with large administrative datasets, and/or an exemplary interest in applied research, and to those with research interests in prosecution, pretrial, courts or sentencing and with a knowledge of, or practical experience with Stata, multilevel modeling, decomposition analysis, and/or semi-structured interviews.

 

Key responsibilities of the Postdoctoral Scholar will include collaboration with faculty across multiple universities; descriptive and multilevel analysis; performing site visits and conducting interviews with stakeholders; preparation of local summary briefs and policy outreach; assisting in data collection and data management; preparing grant proposals, manuscripts, and conference presentations; and participating in graduate student mentoring.

 

In addition to grant-specific projects, the scholar will have flexibility to conduct independent research related to pretrial, prosecution, and sentencing, access to data and opportunity to develop relationships and opportunities for research collaboration with Penn State faculty.