Bio

Ntasha Bhardwaj is a doctoral candidate at the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University. Her work is multi-disciplinary drawing on perspectives from Criminology, Criminal Justice, Sociology, Psychology, Political Science and Law. As a researcher she explores the impact of gender and gender inequality on crime and fear of crime in South Asia. Her dissertation project, Exploring Pathways to Incarceration among Indian and Sri Lankan Women is a mixed methods study (using life event calendars and qualitative interviews) investigating the pre-prison lives and experiences of 180 women incarcerated in India and Sri Lanka. Ntasha’s research agenda is anchored in the goal to build on the limited yet growing criminal justice research in the South Asian context. She has received two awards from the Division on Women and Crime, American Society of Criminology for her dissertation research.

As a teacher, she has gained four years of experience at Rutgers University, teaching and developing these courses: Crime in Different Cultures, Criminology, Gender, Crime and Justice, and Ethical and Philosophical Foundations in Criminal Justice. Her research on fear of crime in an urban university setting was recently published in the Journal of Research on Crime and Delinquency. She has presented her work at the American Society of Criminology Annual Meetings, XXXIV International Post Graduate Course on Victimology, Victim Assistance and Criminal Justice and at the St. Xavier’s Psychology Honors Seminar. She has worked with Vera Institute of Justice, National Council for Research on Women and the Rutgers Marriage Equality Project to conceptualize and conduct different research projects.

Education:

M.A. in Criminal Justice- Rutgers University, Newark (2014)

MSW in Criminology and Criminal Justice- Tata Institute of Social Sciences (2011)

B.A. in English Literature- St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai (2008)