At the beginning of the Fall 2011 semester, we met with all of the new faculty hires in the College of Arts and Sciences. This series of podcasts introduces them and their research interests. Janet Stamatel is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and specializes in criminology and political sociology. In particular, she is interested in the reasons why countries have different levels of crime and where the U.S. falls along the spectrum in relation to other countries in the world. Her current research project looks at crime in Eastern European countries and at how major social changes, such as the fall of Communism, affect crime rates.