Biography

Leslie graduated with her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2016. She then continued her studies at UNCG and received her Master of Arts in Sociology with a concentration in Criminology in 2021. While there she studied what people in the Piedmont Triad were doing to mitigate the Opioid Epidemic. She went on to teach for four years, primarily at Appalachian State University, until she left to pursue her Ph.D.

Her primary areas of interest all fall under the broader umbrella of how inequality is produced, reproduced, and experienced through mechanisms of social control across the criminal legal system. She is committed to conducting evidence-based research that informs policy and programming to address and intervene in these disparities.