Anna Knes

Anna Knes

Anna Knes

Graduate Teaching Assistant

psychology & law; legal decision-making; sentencing; racial disparities

Anna Knes is a third-year PhD student working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant (Fall '25) with Dr. Allison Redlich and as a Graduate Research Assistant (Spring '26) with Dr. Evan Lowder in the Early Justice Strategies Lab. She received an M.S. in Forensic Science from the University of Amsterdam and an MA in Neuroscience & Behavior from Wesleyan University. She is interested in researching cognitive biases in decision making within the criminal justice system.

Expanded Publication List

From George Mason University

  • Knes, A.S., Henry, T.K., Lowder, E.M., Diaz, C., Grommon, E. (revise & resubmit). Whose job is it anyway? Causes and consequences of racial disparities in prosecutorial outcomes and the professionals who can address them. 
  • Knes, A.S., Thai, M. L., Carlisle, H., Jadidi, V., Lowder, E. M. (under review). From Jury to judge: Effects of changing the default sentencing agent on sentence length in Virginia.
  • Knes, A. S., Lowder, E. M., Thai, M. L., Reuter, S. M., Kent, A. R. (2025). Multi-Study Examination of Criminal-Legal Professionals’ use of Risk Assessments in Pretrial Decision-Making. Legal and Criminological Psychology. http://doi.org/10.1111/lcrp.12305

From the University of Amsterdam

  • Knes, A. S., de Gruijter, M., Zuidberg, M. C., de Poot, C. J. (2023). CSI-CSI: Comparing Several Investigative Approaches Toward Crime Scene Improvement. Science & Justice 64(1): 63-72

From Wesleyan University

  • Knes, A.S., Freeland, C.M., Robinson, M.J.F. (2021). Optogenetic Stimulation of the Central Amygdala using Channelrhodopsin in R. Dempski (Ed.), Channelrhodopsin: Methods and Protocols. New York, NY: Springer.
  • Freeland, C.M., Knes, A.S., Robinson, M.J.F. (2020).Translating Concepts of Risky and Loss in Rodent Models of Gambling and its Limitations for Clinical Applications. In Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences.
  • Robinson, M.J.F., Caplan, K. A., Knes, A.S., Rodriguez-Cruz, H.O., Clibanoff, C., Freeland, C.M. (2020). Reward uncertainty attributes incentive value to reward proximal cues, while amphetamine sensitization reverts attention to more predictive reward distal cues. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry. 97: 109795.
  • Robinson, M.J.F., Clibanoff, C., Freeland, C.M., Knes, A.S., Cote, J.R., Russell, T.I. (2019). Distinguishing between predictive and incentive value of uncertain gambling-like cues in a Pavlovian autoshaping task. Behavioural Brain Research. 371(3): 111791.

Education

MS Forensic Science, University of Amsterdam (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

MA Neuroscience and Behavior - Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut, USA)

BA Neuroscience and Behavior & Psychology - Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut, USA)