Center for Public Safety Research

Heather Hensman Kettrey, Director

Heather Kettrey, Ph.D., is a sociologist whose research focuses on power, violence and inequality specifically as they pertain to gender, sexuality and race. She is the director of Clemson's Center for Public Safety Research, associate editor of The Journal of Sex Research and incoming editor of Annual Review of Sex Research. Kettrey’s research has been funded by the Bureau of Justice Administration, Campbell Collaboration, Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women, March of Dimes and Spencer Foundation. She remains committed to using empirical science to understand and alleviate tangible social problems and is always looking for student research collaborators.

Kyle McLean

Kyle McLean, Ph.D., graduated from the University of South Carolina with a Ph.D. in criminology and criminal justice in 2018 and was named the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Law Enforcement Advancing Data and Sciences (LEADS) Academic in 2019. McLean works with law enforcement officers across the country to assess and recommend evidence-based practices for police departments. McLean is currently leading a team of researchers that was awarded more than $892,000 from the National Institute of Justice to evaluate a police de-escalation training program.

Bryan Lee Miller, CBSHS Associate Dean for Research

Bryan Lee Miller, Ph.D., is the associate dean for research (ADR) for the College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences (CBSHS) and a professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice. His work has evaluated drug use, offender reentry, deviant peers and drug treatment. Current projects include examining synthetic opioid trafficking networks, evaluating efforts to reduce the number of individuals with mental illnesses and co-occurring disorders in jail, evaluating treatment courts, designing law enforcement-led initiatives to respond to individuals with mental illnesses and supporting justice-led programs to implement evidence-based practices to reduce substance abuse and divert individuals into treatment.

He has authored over 70 articles and chapters and two books, Emerging Trends in Drug Use and Distribution (2014, Springer) and Marijuana in America (2022, ABC-CLIO). He served as the 49th president of the Southern Criminal Justice Association and chair of the Drug and Alcohol Research Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. He was a 2018-2019 Fulbright Scholar at Tampere University, Finland. He has received a number of awards, including the 2019 Clemson University Research, Scholarship and Artistic Achievement Award; 2022 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Outstanding Mentor Award; 2022 College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences Award for Excellence in Research, Senior Scholar; 2024 Faculty Collaboration Award for the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences; and the 2024 Outstanding Educator Award for the Southern Criminal Justice Association.

Katherine Weisensee, Department Chair and Professor 

Katherine Weisensee, Ph.D., is a professor of anthropology and chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice at Clemson University. She is a forensic anthropology consultant for coroners' offices in the Upstate of South Carolina. Weisensee’s research has been funded by the National Institute of Justice, the National Institutes of Health and the Forensic Science Foundation. She earned her doctoral degree from the University of Tennessee and conducts research related to postmortem interval estimation, skeletal biology and human variation. Her innovative approaches to postmortem interval estimation have been featured in The Economist and The New Scientist.

Amira Jadoon, Assistant Professor

Amira Jadoon, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Clemson University. Prior to joining Clemson, she worked at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, jointly appointed in the Department of Social Sciences and the Combating Terrorism Center (2017-2022). Jadoon also holds external appointments at the Stimson Center (Washington, D.C.) and the George C. Marshall Center (Germany) and is an associate editor at the European Journal of International Security. Prior to beginning her career in academia and research, Jadoon worked as a consultant for Deloitte London (U.K.) between 2006-2011. Her research interests include international security and counterterrorism policies, political violence and terrorism, and the strategic dissemination of disinformation. She has authored 23 peer-reviewed articles, and her work has been featured in leading journals such as the Journal of Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and International Studies Quarterly, among others. She has written over 30 policy articles and research reports. She is also the author of the book The Islamic State in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Strategic Rivalries and Alliances (Lynne Rienner, 2023). Her work has been cited in numerous U.S. and international media outlets such as the New York Times, Al-Jazeera, the Washington Post, CNN, BBC, Foreign Policy, and the Voice of America. In 2022, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) named Jadoon as one of 50 honorees in the U.S. National Security and Foreign Affairs Leadership List.

Tom Sharkey, Professor

Thomas Sharkey, Ph.D., is a professor of industrial engineering (IE) at Clemson University. His research interests focus on creating prescriptive analytics to help better disrupt the systems, processes and operations associated with illicit trafficking networks. He is part of a transdisciplinary research team that combines operations research (OR), social science and lived experience expertise to study sex trafficking. The team has been funded by several grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). Currently, he is part of another transdisciplinary research team that is seeking to understand and disrupt fentanyl trafficking networks. His current and past work on disrupting drug trafficking networks has been funded by the NSF and the Department of Homeland Security. He is a recognized leader within the IE/OR community in using analytics to disrupt illicit trafficking. Sharkey is a Fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers and gave a keynote at the 2024 Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Annual Meeting, a conference whose attendance is consistently over 5,000 people.

Captain Christopher Harrington, Interim Chief of Police for the Clemson University Police Department

Captain Harrington is the interim chief of police for the Clemson University Police Department. Beginning his career with Clemson University in 2005, Harrington previously served as a Sergeant and Lieutenant in Uniform Patrol, Professional Development and Training Division Commander, and Bureau Commander for Investigations and Support Services. Captain Harrington is a state and nationally certified instructor in numerous law enforcement disciplines and served as the project administrator and principal investigator for over $1 Million in awarded state and federal grant projects.

Captain Harrington has led organizational response as Incident Commander and Operations Section Chief for numerous law enforcement incidents affecting the Clemson University community. Captain Harrington is a nationally certified instructor in the Integrating Communication, Assessment, and Tactics (ICAT) de-escalation program and the Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement (ABLE) program. Since 2019, Captain Harrington has partnered with faculty researchers from the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice at Clemson University in grant-funded programs to create a response strategy to address the growing concerns surrounding mental health and co-occurring disorders, along with research on how officer experience and training impacts decision making during calls for service. Captain Harrington has a B.S. in psychology and a Master of Public Administration, both from Clemson University, and is a graduate of the FBI-LEEDA Command and Executive Leadership Institutes and the 76th Session of the Police Executive Research Forum Senior Management Institute for Police.

Captain Cheryl Cromartie, Community Services Division, Greenville County Sheriff's Office

A 25-year veteran of the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office (GSCO), Captain Cromartie currently supervises the Community Services Division, which includes Communication (911 Dispatchers). Captain Cromartie began her law enforcement career with the Sheriff’s Office in December 1992, serving as a Uniform Patrol deputy. Throughout her career at GCSO, she spent many of her years working in the Criminal Investigation Division. In 2009, Cheryl made the rank of Sergeant in the Uniform Patrol Division, and in 2015 made the rank of Lieutenant within the same division. In 2018, she was promoted to the rank of Captain over the Community Services Division. Recognized both professionally and in the community, Captain Cromartie has received Distinguished Service Awards and Letters of Commendation. In addition, she was honored with an Unsung Hero Award from Greenville Technical College and special recognition from Springfield Baptist Church, among others.

Captain Cromartie’s education and training background includes various training and certifications in areas that include but are not limited to leadership and management, supervision, crisis negotiation, interviewing and interrogating, sexual assault investigations, forensic interviewing, conflict resolution, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and specific skills instructor. In addition, her formal education includes a B.S. in criminal justice with a minor in psychology from South Carolina State University, a dual M.A. in human resource development and human resource management from Webster University, and a M.S. in criminal justice administration from Columbia Southern University. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in leadership management from St. Thomas University. She has also contributed to the education of others through her service as an adjunct criminal justice instructor at Tri-County Technical College for more than six years and a graduate of Leadership Greenville, Class 42.