Liz Calhoun

Liz Calhoun is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography, Environment & Society. She holds an MA in critical gender studies from Central European University and a BA in history from UC Berkeley. Her research and teaching interests engage questions related to carceral geographies, abolition geographies, critical technology studies, Black feminism, digital geographies, political geography and urban geography. Her current research examines the rise of crime risk forecasting software used by municipal police departments in the US and asks how technocratic reforms attempt to reshape the purview of policing in response to activist-led campaigns for defunding and police abolition. Her dissertation reveals the ways that contending visions for understanding risk and harm mediate and transform the spatial dimensions of how community is defined, enacted, and made political. This work has been supported by fellowships with the Institute for Advanced Study and MnDrive Initiative at the University of Minnesota as well as the Digital Humanism Initiative at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.