U. professor earns half-million dollar fellowship for gun violence research

Daniel Semenza, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice at Rutgers—Camden, earned a three-year, $525,000 fellowship from the Stoneleigh Foundation to conduct research related to gun violence, according to a press release.

The inspiration behind Semenza's work is where he grew up — a town next to Sandy Hook, Connecticut, where an elementary school shooting took place in 2012.

During Semenza's time in graduate school, he found it difficult to get funding for gun violence research due to the political polarization around the issue. But funding became available when he came to Rutgers as a professor in 2018, which was also when the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center was established, he said.

"It was a little bit of luck that the world started catching up to the desire to do this research," Semenza said.

After becoming a professor, Semenza joined the Center as its director of Interpersonal Violence Research. Semenza described the work of the Center as nonpartisan research around interpersonal and self-inflicted violence. Through his research, Semenza said he hopes to appeal to lawmakers who have the power to administer policies that can improve public safety.

The Stoneleigh Foundation, which is funding Semenza's work, is an organization that seeks to ameliorate youth health and juvenile justice systems in Philadelphia. Semenza said he will be working closely with the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where he will gather clinical and quantitative data from children who have been exposed to or injured by gun violence.

"There is a close link here between people hurting each other and people hurting themselves," he said. "I want to continue to understand how we might think of violence prevention as a form of suicide prevention."

He added that there are multiple interconnected systems working together in the wider understanding of such research, including criminal justice, health care and social work.

He said research is an essential foundation to his work, and he expressed pride in not only his own work but also other works by members of the Center and similar institutions across the U.S. Support from the University community is significant as the Center uncovers further insight into gun violence, Semenza said.

"I want people to know that there's hope, and people have reason to be optimistic that we can make things better," he said. "We don't have to accept the high levels of gun violence we have in the United States. We don't have to accept mass shootings as a daily fear … This is not normal."