This year, the IATSO Conference will feature its first ever “Meet the Expert” Early Career Researcher Event. The event will take place on the 26th of August from 18:00-19:30h CEST (12:00 AM – 01:30h PM EDT, 09:00 – 10:30h AM PDT) and will be split into an on-site and a virtual video-conferencing format with different Keynote Speakers as experts being present for each format.
The “Meet the Expert” Early Career Researcher Event will be open to all master’s and postgraduate students, including PhD students, postdocs, and junior professors. Our aim is to provide an opportunity for early career researchers to network both with established researchers and amongst themselves.
For our on-site event we are excited to announce Dr. Wineke J. Smid and Dr. Alexander F. Schmidt as our experts. Additionally, we are delighted to announce Dr. Leigh Harkins and Dr. Michael H. Miner as our experts for the virtual event.
Dr. Wineke Smid is head of the research department at Forensic Care Specialists in Utrecht, the Netherlands. She divides her time between conducting and supervising empirical research projects, carrying out individual (risk) assessments of residential high-risk sex offenders and providing feedback of state-of-the-art knowledge to various stakeholders in Dutch society. She conducted a national study on Sex Offender Risk Assessment in the Netherlands and is currently involved in research projects focusing on the assessment and treatment of sexual self-regulation factors (sexual deviance, sexual preoccupation, sexual coping) as well as fundamental sexological research on the Incentive Motivational Model. She provides (risk assessment) training to police officers, prosecutors, judges, treatment providers and probation officers.
Dr. Alexander F. Schmidt is a Senior Lecturer at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany where he teaches forensic psychology. He has an approbation as cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist for adults. His research interests include sexual behavior and criminal psychology with a focus on indirect latency-based measures of (paraphilic and atypical) sexual interests and how these are linked to sexual offending. Alexander has published extensively on sexual offending against children and forensic evaluations of sexual offenders as well as other forensic expert assessments. He serves as an expert witness on paraphilic interests in family and criminal court proceedings and has been working with offender and non-offending psychotherapy populations. He serves as an associate editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior and is member on several editorial boards.
Dr. Leigh Harkins is an Associate Professor at Ontario Tech University in Canada. Her current research interests focus on understanding sexual aggression and aggression in groups including factors influencing perceptions of the acceptability of sexually coercive behavior, sexual violence related to dating app use, and multiple perpetrator sexual offending. Dr. Harkins’ previous work has focused on understanding and improving assessment and treatment of people who have committed sexual offenses. She also has practice experience working in treatment groups for sexual offenders, and completing psychological assessments in prisons and community criminal justice settings in Canada and the UK. Leigh has published numerous manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters and has co-edited a book in forensic psychology.
Dr. Michael H. Miner is Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health and Research Director for the Program in Human Sexuality at the University of Minnesota Medical School. His career has involved the application of psychological methods and statistics in the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, cardiovascular disease, sexual abuse violence, and HIV infection. He began his research in sexual aggression as the experimental psychologist for the Sex Offender Treatment and Evaluation Project at the California Department of Mental Health and has continued exploring causes of sexual perpetration in adolescent males since joining the faculty of the Program in Human Sexuality. Dr. Miner is the Past President of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers and a founding Vice President of the International Association for the Treatment of Sex Offenders.
While the experts will be available for open questions during the event, we would like to collect some of your questions in advance, to ensure a lively and constructive discussion in both the on-site and virtual formats. These questions can concern your research, career, or anything in between. While we are more than excited to offer you this unique opportunity, we are still in talks with our Keynote Speakers to see who will be available as experts for this event. As soon as the experts have been decided on, this site will be updated. We thank you for your patience and look forward to seeing you there, whether virtually or in person!
Please send your questions for the “Meet the Expert” Early Career Researcher Event to Ms. Maeve Moosburner (m.moosburner@krimz.de).