The Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, recently launched the Corruption, Networks, and Transnational Crime Research Center (CONTRA). The new research hub aims to advance how transnational crime can be understood and studied by combining deep empirical insights with sophisticated and diverse methodological approaches.
Three women professors will serve as CONTRA’s co-directors.
Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera has taught in the Schar School of Policy and Government since 2017. She achieved the rank of full professor in 2022. Dr. Correa-Cabrera’s research on migration, borderlands, networks, and criminal organizations has significantly advanced the understanding of the interactions between human smuggling, organized crime, and state power. Her most recent book is Frontera: A Journey across the U.S.-Mexico Border (Texas Christian University Press, 2024). Dr. Correa-Cabrera is a graduate of Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, where she majored in economics. She earned two master’s degrees and a Ph.D., all in political science, from The New School in New York City.
Naoru Koizumi is the Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Endowed Chair and associate dean for research in the Schar School, where she has taught for more than two decades. Through qualitative methods and networking modeling approaches, Dr. Koizumi studies illicit organ trafficking and other hidden economies, offering powerful and practical tools to understand and disrupt criminal markets. She is a graduate of Aoyama-Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan, where she received her bachelor’s degree in business administration with a minor in economics. Dr. Koizumi earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in regional science from the University of Pennsylvania and a second Ph.D. in environmental and preventive medicine from the Hyogo College of Medicine in Japan.
Janine Wedel, Distinguished University Professor, is a social anthropologist. An expert in corruption and informal power networks, she has conducted extensive research on how elites operate across blurred public-private boundaries, reshaping governance and accountability worldwide. Dr. Wedel is the author of numerous award-winning books, including Unaccountable: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom, and Politics and Created an Outsider Class (Pegasus Books, 2016). Dr. Wedel received her bachelor’s degree in history, social sciences, and German from Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas, her master’s degree in anthropology and East European studies from Indiana University, and her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley.