Research Bio

Erin Michelle Turner Kerrison, PhD is a legal scholar whose research investigates structural inequality, criminal justice, and health disparities. She is best known for ethnographic and mixed-methods studies exploring how law enforcement and legal systems shape health and social outcomes for marginalized communities. Kerrison’s research integrates criminology, public health, and critical race theory to evaluate policies and institutions that perpetuate inequity. Her work informs criminal justice reform and social policy.

She is an Associate Professor of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley and Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Research on Social Change. Her research has been published in Health Services Research, Law and Human Behavior, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), and Social Science & Medicine. Kerrison has received funding from the NIH, NSF, and Arnold Ventures for her work on structural determinants of justice. At Berkeley, she teaches the core research methods sequence for all MSW students and electives on legal systems and health equity, mentoring students in community-engaged and policy research.

Research Expertise and Interest

crime, criminal justice, drug control, health disparities, mass incarceration, mental health, mixed methods, policing, prisons, punishment, risk, reentry, substance abuse, trauma, violence, race and gender, artificial intelligence, data science, social work and education, public impact research/scholarship