51ºÚÁÏÍø

Dr. Denise Woodall has taught Sociology at the University of North Georgia since 2013, where she serves as a Senior Lecturer. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Georgia with substantive areas in Crime, Law, Deviance, and Inequality, and a Master of Arts in Criminology from the University of Miami. Dr. Woodall is an active member of the American Society of Criminology and the Georgia Sociological Association and serves in the Division of Convict Criminology.

Dr. Woodall has contributed to several National Institutes of Health studies on the lives of opioid users, older drug users, and women methamphetamine users in suburban contexts. Her independent research examines media messaging and college classroom pedagogy, policing, carceral status, and child-reunification experiences among formerly incarcerated mothers. Her most recent project focuses on civic engagement among formerly incarcerated individuals.

Dr. Woodall is a Certified Addiction Recovery Empowerment Specialist (CARES) and CPS-AD (Certified Peer Specialist in Addictive Disease). She works with Atlas Behavioral Health conducting resilience groups for people in treatment for substance use disorder. She volunteers with Mothers Making a Change, a publicly funded residential treatment program for women in recovery seeking to reunite with their children and has served on the Board of Directors for Freedom Club Inc., a recovery clubhouse for young people.

She has a long history of community engagement, including co-founding Healthcare-Now Georgia and advocating for criminal justice policy reform. Dr. Woodall has served for several years as the Semaphore editor for the Georgia Sociological Association. A former media studies major at Kennesaw State University, she also worked as news director for WCHK AM 1290 in Canton, Georgia.

Her teaching emphasizes helping students develop a strong sociological imagination and apply their analytic skills to real-world social issues and professional settings.

• Ph.D., Sociology, University of Georgia
• M.A., Sociology, University of Miami
• B.A., Communication, Kennesaw State University

Woodall, Denise 2026. Fighting Forward: Building Capital and Managing Stigma among Formerly Incarcerated People through Civic Engagement. Forthcoming in Justice, Opportunities, and Rehabilitation.

Woodall, Denise Ruth. 2025. Harmonious Paradoxes: Formerly Incarcerated Activists Self and Social Change in Transformative Justice. Forthcoming in Transformative Justice Journal.

Woodall, Denise 2025. The Symbolic Violence of Criminological Education for Formerly Incarcerated Women: Critiques, Reflections, and Solutions in Women of Convict Criminology JRenee Trombley and Doshie Piper (eds). Routledge.

Woodall, Denise 2023 Here She Comes: Twenty-five Years of Women Under-representation in Convict Criminology. A special edition of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, Twenty-Five Years of Convict Criminology 33(1), 38-54.

Woodall, Denise and Sarah Shannon 2022. Carceral Citizens Rising: Resisting Race, Gender, and Carceral Status Based Oppressions through activism. Social Service Review 96(2) 308-352.

Woodall, Denise and Miriam Boeri 2020. “Developing a Penal Abolitionist Application to Drug Treatment Drawing from Insider Perspectives and Lived Experiences.” Humanity & Society 46(1): 78-109.

Boeri, Miriam; Pereira, Elise; Minkova, Alina; Marcato, Kevin; Martinez, Elianne; Woodall, Denise. 2020. "Green Hope: Perspectives on Cannabis from People who Use Opioids" Sociological Inquiry 91(3):668-695.

Woodall, Denise 2019. “We are All Criminals: The Abolitionist Potential of Remembering.” Journal of Social Justice 45(4):117-140.

Woodall, Denise. 2017. "Interrupting Constructions of a Criminalized Other through a Revised Criminal Activities Checklist Classroom Exercise." Teaching Sociology 45(2):161-167.

Arrigo, Bruce and Denise Woodall 2016. Critical Perspectives on Female Offending in Encyclopedia of Women in Crime edited by F. P. Bernat and K. Frailing. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.

Woodall, Denise and Miriam Boeri 2014. “When You Got Friends in Low Places, You Stay Low: Social Networks and Access to Needed Resources for Female Methamphetamine Users in Low Income Suburban Communities.”  Journal of Drug Issues 44(3):321-339.

Woodall, Denise 2013. "Pedagogy in Higher Education Classrooms: Context, Content, and Classroom Dynamics," The Journal of Public and Professional Sociology 5:2 Article 8.

Boeri, Miriam, Ben Tyndall, Denise Woodall. 2011. “Suburban Poverty: Barriers to Services and Injury Prevention among Women who Use Methamphetamine.” Western Journal of Emergency Medicine 7(3):284-292