Kayla Martensen

Assistant Professor

Photo: Kayla Martensen
Email: 
kmartensen@unm.edu
Phone: 
505-277-2501
Office: 
1080

Curriculum vitae

Education: 

Ph.D., Criminology, Law and Justice, University of Illinois-Chicago (2024)

Research Interests: 

Carceral Reform, Abolition Feminism, Youth Justice, Punishment, Law and Society

Research Statement: 

My research interests relate to issues around state violence, structural inequities, and transformative possibilities, focusing on the gendered and racial implications of state and social punishment. My current work broadly examines contemporary carceral reforms that exacerbate racial and gendered inequalities through therapeutic-legal interventions. My specific research explores contemporary “community-based” juvenile justice reforms, focusing on how these reforms interact with community-based service sectors to reshape juvenile justice practices. I explore how community services, often seen as diversions and alternatives to incarceration, can perpetuate carceral logic by becoming extensions of the carceral state. Using qualitative methods grounded in abolition feminist thought, I analyze the collaboration between the juvenile justice division and community-based service sector as a microcosm of the collusion between the carceral and social welfare states, revealing how these reforms contribute to what I term the “web of detainment.” This concept illustrates the entanglement of carceral and community-based systems, challenging the notion that carceral community interventions are inherently liberatory. My work critically examines current reform practices while contributing to developing practices that challenge state violence and structural inequities while focusing on transformative possibilities.

Recent/Select Publications: 

  • Martensen, K. (forthcoming 2025). Carceral Collusions with “The Community”: An Examination of Community-Based Juvenile Justice Reforms. The Scholar and the Feminist Online. 
  • Lopez, V., Martensen, K., Diaz, M. (2024). Solidary in Action: Collaborating with System-Impacted Youth to Transform the Juvenile (In)Justice System through Youth Activism. Family Court Review, 62(4), 806-817.
  • Martensen, K. (2022). Prison is not Feminist, Service is not Liberation: Punishment, Service and a Web of Detainment. In Bierria, A., Caruthers, J. &, Lober, B. (Eds.) Abolition Feminisms: Feminist Ruptures Against the Carceral State. Haymarket Books.

Awards:

Beth E. Richie Justice Advocacy Award                                    2024 

University of Illinois Chicago  

 

Feminist Criminology Graduate Research Scholarship            2020 

Division of Feminist Criminology 

American Society of Criminology  

 

Institute of Race and Public Policy                                           2019 

Emerging Scholars Program 

University of Illinois Chicago