Kayla Martensen

Kayla Marie Martensen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of New Mexico. Kayla’s areas of expertise include critical carceral studies, abolition, state violence, and the juvenile legal system. She has authored and co-authored several publications related to these areas, including contributions to gender, ethnicity, and juvenile justice. Kayla is a qualitative researcher who uses abolition feminism as a methodological and empirical framework in search of liberatory knowledge production. Kayla’s interest in academia as a first-gen Mestiza (white/Filipinx) from Chicago is rooted in scholarship as an act of resistance. However, she remains inquisitive about the ways academia continues to serve as an arm of the carceral state.