Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and (by courtesy) Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

My research focuses on the political economy of security, crime, and law enforcement, with a regional emphasis on the Americas. Methodologically, I employ observational and experimental causal inference techniques.

You can click here to view my CV. My research projects are listed on this page; my work has been published in World Politics and State Politics & Policy Quarterly, among other journals. My research has been supported by the American Political Science Association Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant and the U.S. Institute of Peace-Minerva Peace & Security Scholar Award.

On this site, I also host a blog, mostly about solving math puzzles and riddles for fun.

You can reach me via email: jgerez at uci[dot]edu.

UC Irvine students: You can sign up for my office hours here.

Prospective Ph.D. students

I appreciate your interest in my work and in the Ph.D. program in Criminology, Law and Society at UC Irvine. Please note that in our program, admission is to the program as a whole rather than to work with a specific faculty member, and advisors are assigned after admission by the graduate director. For questions about the application process, funding, or the program itself, the Social Ecology Ambassadors (seambassador@uci.edu) are a great resource. If you'd like to chat about research interests or graduate school more generally, you're welcome to sign up for my office hours (link above) on the day of if slots are still open, as I prioritize current students. If neither of these options works for you, feel free to email me, but please know that because of the volume of messages I receive, I may not be able to respond individually to every inquiry.