SHadar Aviram is the Thomas Miller Professor at UC Hastings College of the Law. She holds law and criminology degrees from Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from UC Berkeley, where she studied as a Fulbright Fellow and a Regents Intern. Professor Aviram specializes in criminal justice and civil rights from a socio-legal perspective. She is the author of four acclaimed books, the latest of which is FESTER: Carceral Permeability and California’s COVID-19 Correctional Disaster (2024).

Professor Aviram has published on domestic violence, behavioral perspectives on policing, prosecutorial and defense behavior, unconventional family units, public trust in the police, correctional policy, criminal justice budget policy, and the history of female crime and punishment. She served as President of the Western Society of Criminology and as a Trustee of the Law and Society Association., and is currently the Book Review Editor for Law & Society Review. In Fall 2019 she was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Animal Law & Policy Program. One of the leading voices in California and nationwide against mass incarceration, Professor Aviram is a frequent media commentator and legal analyst on politics, immigration, criminal justice policy, and civil rights, and was a vocal critic of the Trump administration.

Professor Aviram is expanding her expertise to Jewish studies and rabbinics. She is graduate of the Graduate Theological Union’s Richard Dinner Center for Jewish Studies  (M.A., 2025) and a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College. 

Professor Aviram’s socio-legal interests stem from her lifelong commitment to compassion for humans and nonhuman animals. She is a plant-based endurance athlete, an amateur singer and musician, and a mindfulness meditation teacher and practitioner.