Janani Umamaheswar
Janani Umamaheswar
Associate Professor
Social inequality, punishment and incarceration, the life course, qualitative research methods
Dr. Janani Umamaheswar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society, where she co-directs (with Dr. Robert J. Norris) the Social Justice Collaborative--an intellectual community devoted to the exploration of social justice and equity issues, particularly in the criminal legal system. She is also an affiliate faculty member in the Women and Gender Studies program at George Mason University. In 2025, she received the Presidential Award for Faculty Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Her research and teaching interests are broadly in the areas of social inequality, punishment and incarceration, and qualitative research methods. She has studied (for example) the role of masculinity in the incarceration-homelessness nexus, the prison experiences of wrongfully convicted men, and the support-building strategies of families of people in prison. Her current project is an ethnographic study of formerly incarcerated people's sense of civic identity and belonging. Her recent work has been published in journals such as Punishment & Society; Justice Quarterly; Theoretical Criminology; British Journal of Criminology; Feminist Criminology; Critical Criminology; and Crime, Media, Culture.
Selected Publications
Recent Publications
(* denotes equal authorship; ** denotes student author)
Janani Umamaheswar, Eman Tadros, and Arden Richards-Karamarkovich**. 2025. “Developing evidence-informed support groups for families of incarcerated people: Findings from a qualitative study. Family Process 64(2): e70042. Published online: hhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/famp.70042
Janani Umamaheswar, Peyton Frye, Erin Eife, and Sydney Ingel**. 2025. “Pretrial processing and the making of incipient carceral citizens.” Punishment & Society. Published online before print: https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745251336393
Janani Umamaheswar. 2024. “Beyond ‘pleasant lies’: The ‘fictionalizing tendencies’ in family members’ narratives of men’s violence.” Crime, Media, Culture. Published online before print: https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590241308565
G. Alex Sinha and Janani Umamaheswar*. 2024. “Hidden takings and the communal burden of punishment.” Forthcoming in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Accepted draft: https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4842713
Arden Richards-Karamarovich**, Janani Umamaheswar and Robert Norris. 2024. “Humor, resistance, and the power of images: The case for studying prison cartoons.” Crime, Media, Culture. Published online before print: https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590241290451
Arden Richards-Karamarkovich** and Janani Umamaheswar. 2024. “Contaminated memories: How formerly incarcerated mothers remember their pasts and imagine their futures.” Punishment & Society 27(1): 129-146.
Janani Umamaheswar. 2024. “The construction of capital among family members of people in prison.” British Journal of Criminology 64(6): 1259-1274.
Arden Richards-Karamarkovich** and Janani Umamaheswar. 2023. “Narrative resilience among formerly incarcerated mothers.” Feminist Criminology 19(1): 59-78.
Janani Umamaheswar. 2023. "The relational costs of wrongful convictions." Critical Criminology 31: 707-723.
Courses Taught
CRIM 402: Punishment and Corrections
CRIM 490: Gender and Crime
CRIM 795: Gender and Crime
CRIM 795: Qualitative Research Methods
CRIM 307: Social Inequality, Crime, and Justice
Education
Ph.D., Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University (2014)
M.A., Sociology, University of Toronto (2009)
B.A., Sociology, University of Toronto (2008)
Dissertations Supervised
Lindsay R. Smith, The Power of Carceral Connectivity: Incarcerated Individuals’ Efforts to Communicate, Find Closeness, and Engage in Relationships with Their Loved Ones (2025)
Arden Richards-Karamarkovich, Exploring the Liminal Process of Reentry Survivorship (2025)