Doctoral Student Bios

Anna Knes

Anna Knes

Anna Knes

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

Anna Knes is a fourth-year PhD student working as a PREP research associate with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) under Dr. Carina Hahn.  She also researches with the Early Justice Strategies research lab, led by Dr. Evan M. Lowder. Anna received an M.S. in Forensic Science from the University of Amsterdam and an MA in Neuroscience & Behavior from Wesleyan University. Her research interests include studying racial disparities, and sentencing decisions, and forensic reporting in the courtroom.

Expanded Publication List

From George Mason University

  • Knes, A.S., Lowder, E. M., Oramas-Mora, D., & Reuter, S. (In preparation). The effect of pretrial supervision on pretrial misconduct.
  • Knes, A.S. & Lowder, E.M. (Under review). From liberation to focal concerns: 60 years of research to explain racial disparities in judicial sentencing.
  • Lowder, E.M, Carlisle, H., Knes, A.S., Lawson, Spencer G., Rucker, J. (2026). Drivers of racial disparities: The role of relative disadvantage in pretrial outcomes.
  • Knes, A.S., Henry, T.K., Lowder, E.M., Diaz, C., Grommon, E. (2026). Whose job is it anyway? Criminal-legal professionals' and community members' perceptions of system disparities.
  • Knes, A.S., Thai, M. L., Carlisle, H., Jadidi, V., Lowder, E. M. (2026). 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)