Yiwen Zhang
Recipient of the Dissertation Support Award by the Research and Graduate Studies Office in the College of the Liberal Arts
518 Oswald Tower
University Park, PA 16802
Websites:
Biography:
Yiwen Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate in Criminology at Penn State University. Her research interests encompass mass incarceration, prisoner reentry, and substance use issues. She is a graduate assistant and has worked on several projects, including random drug testing in prisons, drug take-back in rural communities, and providing certified recovery specialist assistance to reentrants with opioid use disorders. Her most recent thesis focused on the effects of the prison boom, in the beginning of the mass incarceration era, on rural employment in the United States.
Yiwen graduated from Pepperdine University with a master’s degree in Public Policy. She received her B.A. at Peking University. Prior to joining Penn State she was a research scholar at New York University’s Marron Institute. At Marron she collaborated with correctional practitioners across the country and managed pilot studies aiming to improve prison safety and management.