Kayla Marie Martensen
PhD Student
Criminology, Law, and Justice
Pronouns: Sher/Her/Hers
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About
Kayla Marie Martensen (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois Chicago in the Criminology, Law, and Justice department, where she is currently completing her dissertation. Kayla is a qualitative researcher who uses abolition feminism to advance her methodological frameworks in search of liberatory knowledge production. Her dissertation proposes an emerging theoretical framework, the web of detainment, to illustrate the collusion between carceral agencies and the social service sector. Kayla’s areas of interest and expertise include critical carceral studies, abolition feminism, prison abolition, gender violence, and youth studies, and she has authored and co-authored several publications related to these areas, including contributions to gender, ethnicity, and juvenile justice. Kayla is a full-time lecturer at Loyola University Chicago, teaching classes related to punishment, race, gender, and social justice. Previously Kayla was an instructor at Northeastern Illinois University, where she contributed to curriculum building and curated new classes, such as The Carceral State, in the Justice Studies department.