Heith Copes

Heith Copes is a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He received his PhD in sociology from the University of Tennessee in 2001. He uses qualitative methods and narrative theory to examine drug use and crime. He has published over 100 refereed journal articles in journals such as British Journal of Criminology, Criminology, European Journal of Criminology, Justice Quarterly, and Social Problems. He has been a visiting scholar and speaker at universities across the United States and Europe, including the University of Queensland, University of South Wales, Aalborg University, University of Oslo, and the Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research at Aarhus University. He has recently been invited to be a visiting scholar at the University of Malmo and at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law. In 2014, he received the Outstanding Educator Award from the Southern Criminal Justice Association. He also received the 2017 Ireland Award for Scholarly Distinction from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He is the past president of the Southern Criminal Justice Associations. He is currently the Co-Editor of the journal Deviant Behavior.