UA Criminal Justice Professor Recognized with Buford Peace Award

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dr. Bronwen Lichtenstein, associate professor and graduate director in the department of criminal justice at The University of Alabama, has been selected the winner of the 2012 Lahoma Adams Buford Peace Award.

This award, established in 2002 by Social Work alumnus Mr. Tony D. Walker to honor Lahoma Adams Buford, is given annually to a faculty member at The University of Alabama who in his or her teaching, research, professional practice and personal life has demonstrated exceptional levels of involvement in mediating human disputes, helping overcome prejudice, promoting justice and establishing peace.

Lichtenstein is an advocate who has pioneered efforts to destigmatize HIV/AIDS, improve the quality of life of people living with HIV/AIDS, and change laws disproportionately affecting people of color.

In particular, she has focused on women’s and minority issues in relation to HIV/AIDS, and on stigma as a barrier to STI treatment and screening in the rural South. Lichtenstein makes the claim that stigma associated with STIs is based on stereotypes and involves discriminatory attitudes or actions, intersecting with race/ethnicity, gender, and poverty.

Lichtenstein has published extensively in the areas of stigma, gender and health, health and crime, and minority health in relation to STI/HIV. She has authored and co-authored numerous books, journal articles and book chapters in these areas and continues to present and offer her expertise nationally and internationally.

Her expertise is sought by various levels of organizations, including the National Office on AIDS Policy, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Sociologists’ AIDS Network, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More recently, she provided services to the American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center in their efforts to end discrimination toward HIV-infected prisoners in Alabama. From 1995-2005, she served on the Governor of Alabama’s HIV/AIDS Commission for Children, Youth and Adults. Lichtenstein has received NIH funding for studies on stigma and STIs and domestic violence and HIV risk among rural women.

Recently, she was elected president of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Sociology of Mental Health and Illness at the ISA World Congress of Sociology held in Gothenburg, Sweden.

In honor of her work, Lichtenstein received the 2010 Award for Career Contributions to the Sociology of HIV/AIDS from the Sociologists’ AIDS Network and the American Sociological Association. She has been a professor at UA since 2004.

Lichtenstein was nominated for the Lahoma Adams Buford Peace Award because of her “commitment to justice and to the rights of neglected and underserved people in the United States.”

Established in 1965 by the Alabama Legislature, The University of Alabama School of Social Work seeks to solve bio-psychosocial problems, improve individual and social conditions and promote justice and human dignity through teaching, research and service.