Chris M. Smith, Ph.D.,  is an Associate Professor of Sociology. Her areas of specialization include crime and inequality, feminist criminology, historical research methods, illicit markets, organized crime, social network analysis, sociology of gender, violence, and urban sociology. As a sociologist of crime and inequality, Chris examines how relationships, networks, and neighborhoods differently embed people in crime and violence. She is especially motivated by questions of how gender shapes criminal networks and violent interactions. Chris’s current research, Vice for Sale, is a SSHRC-funded project on illicit markets and neighborhood change.

Chris's book Syndicate Women: Gender and Networks in Chicago Organized Crime (University of California Press 2019) is a historical social network analysis of gender, criminal markets, and organized crime from Chicago's Prohibition era. 

Chris has published in American Sociological Review, City & Community, Criminology, Crime & Delinquency, Feminist Criminology, Global Crime, Social Problems, Socius, and others. Chris's research has received funding from Canada’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council, the US National Science Foundation, the US National Institute of Justice, the University of Toronto Mississauga, the University of California, Davis, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Chris has received multiple awards including the departmental Jeannette Wright Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentorship, the Division of Feminist Criminology Teaching and Mentorship Award, and the university-wide Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Chris received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2015 and held a previous appointment at the University of California, Davis.