Biography

Growing up in rural Ontario, Dr. Reid received a Bachelor of Applied Science in Child Studies from the University of Guelph. She spent a year after graduation employed as a research assistant at the Addiction Research Foundation before pursuing a Masters in Criminology at the Centre of Criminology at the University of Toronto. Her master’s thesis considered the theoretical underpinnings of juvenile justice legislation as it applied to front line youth justice practitioners in the move towards the proclamation of the Young Offenders Act. She was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Child and Family Studies at the University of Guelph where she continued on contractually limited appointments until she finished her PhD at the University of Toronto. Her doctoral work in higher education was concerned with the pre-service education of correctional and criminal justice workers. Her dissertation considered the impact of class size on critical thinking skills and student engagement in teaching undergraduate criminology courses. Receiving her PhD in 1994, she continued her teaching on limited term contracts in the Departments of Sociology at the University of Guelph and the University of Waterloo, as well as the criminology program at Woodsworth College at the University of Toronto. In 1997 she accepted a position as the Director of the newly developed criminology program at St. Thomas and she has been teaching and doing research there ever since.

Dr. Reid was involved in the creation of the Centre for Research on Youth at Risk in 2002. As Director of the Centre, in 2008, she established a youth-led advisory team, known as Youth Matters, and in 2012 expanded this to include the creation of the chapter inside the provincial correctional facility for youth in Miramichi, New Brunswick. She has helped to co-ordinate and implement summer institutes, youth conferences and student engagement activities.

In 2014, she co-ordinated the creation of STUMitts and with her students collected over 1,000 mittens that were delivered in partnership with the Fredericton Police to local school children who may be living in poverty. She is actively involved in community service serving on the board of the John Howard Society, the Vanier Institute of the Family, Chrysalis House, the Canadian Coalition on the Rights of the Child and the Crime Prevention Association of New Brunswick. In 2014, she was inducted into the New Brunswick Crime Prevention Hall of Fame for her active involvement, research and service in the prevention of crime in New Brunswick.