College of Arts & Sciences 

Maria Kefalas is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Violence Research and Prevention. She earned her BA from Wellesley College in economics and worked at the Brookings Institution before completing her MA and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. After completing a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and teaching at Barnard College-Columbia University, she joined the faculty at Saint Joseph’s University in 2001.

She writes on a wide range of topics including family, community, culture, and class. Her books include Working-Class Heroes: Protecting Home, Community, and Nation in a Chicago Neighborhood (2003, University of California Press) and (with co-author Kathryn Edin) Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage (2005, University of California Press), recipient of the 2006 William J. Goode Book Award for the most outstanding contribution to family scholarship.

Currently, she serves as an Associate Member on the MacArthur Foundation’s Network on Adult Transitions. Based on research funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, her newest book with Patrick Carr, titled Hollowing out the Middle, describes how the most serious threat facing small-town America will be the loss of its most precious resource: young people. -book cover-  -book trailer-  http://hollowingoutthemiddle.com/

As the Director of the Institute for Violence Research and Prevention, she coordinates an annual symposium series and organizes an annual vigil to honor the Philadelphia's homicide victims (link to ABC video stream here http://www.sju.edu/ucomm/newswatch/wpvi-vigil.mpg). She also works with high school students from Camden and Philadelphia as part of the University's Ignatian College Connection, a pre-college enrichment program.

She lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband Patrick Carr and their two children Camille and P.J. During the Fall of 2007, she has been appointed to serve as Research Associate with the Social Science Center at Bryn Mawr College.