Stuart Henry (criminologist)

Stuart Henry is Professor of Criminal Justice and Director of the School of Public Affairs, San Diego State University. He has also been appointed Visiting Professor of Criminology at the University of Kent's School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research from 2008-2013.

Henry was born in Lambeth, South London, England on October 18, 1949. He studied sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury from where he graduated with a Ph.D. in 1976. From 1975-1978 he was a research sociologist at the Addiction Research Unit of the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. From 1979-1983 he taught sociology of deviance and medical sociology at Trent Polytechnic (now Nottingham Trent University) while also conducting research at Middlesex Polytechnic (now Middlesex University in Northwest London). In December 1983 he moved to Old Dominion University in Virginia, United States.

Henry joined San Diego State University in 2006 after spending seven years as Chair of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he also has served as Associate Dean of the College of Lifelong Learning (1999-2002). He was previously Professor and Chair of Sociology at Valparaiso University (1998-99) and Professor of Criminology at Eastern Michigan University (1987-1998).

Henry teaches criminological theory, white-collar crime, school violence and deviant behavior. He has conducted research on varieties of marginalized knowledge and informal institutions including: mutual aid groups, informal economies, non-state systems of discipline and social control, and cooperatives. Most recently, he examined the relationship between social norms, private discipline and public law. He has received grant funding from the British Social and Economic Research Council, the National Science Foundation and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

An internationally renowned criminologist, Henry has 23 books published and over one hundred of his articles have appeared in professional journals or as book chapters. His books include the classic work The Hidden Economy (1978). Other works include: Criminological Theory: An Analysis of its Underlying Assumptions (with Werner Einstadter, 1995, 2006) and Constitutive Criminology: Beyond Postmodernism (1996) and Constitutive Criminology at Work (1999) (both with Dragan Milovanovic), and (with Mark Lanier), What is Crime? (2001) Essential Criminology (1998, 2004), and The Essential Criminology Reader (2006). Henry serves on the editorial board of Theoretical Criminology and Critical Criminology and on the Board of Directors of the Association for Integrated Studies.