Kelle Barrick, PhD, MA

Affiliation: Center for Public Safety and Resilience at RTI International

Kelle Barrick is a principal scientist and senior research criminologist in the Center for Public Safety and Resilience at RTI International. Using inclusive and collaborative mixed methods research approaches, she seeks to better understand the scope and nature of human trafficking and to improve prevention, intervention, and response efforts. Dr. Barrick’s current research includes estimating the prevalence of labor trafficking among construction workers; exploring the nexus of human trafficking and natural disasters; increasing our understanding of how labor trafficking recruitment, exploitation, and identification vary across distinct industries; and increasing our understanding of opportunities to disrupt sex trafficking recruitment and network operations. She is an expert on human trafficking and has participated in expert working groups on trafficking research by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, among others.

Research Interests:

• Human trafficking

• Gender-based violence

• Intersection of climate change, victimization, and the response to victimization

• Community-based participatory action research and evaluation

• Transdisciplinary research