Ms. Shelby is an applied sociologist with research experience in gender violence, the illegal commercial sex marketplace, and hard-to-reach populations. Her main academic project is tracing a feminist history of the rape kit and other forensic technologies. She has training in quantitative, qualitative, and public health methodologies, and has earned a M.S. in the sociology of science and technology from Georgia Tech, and a M.A. in gender and sexuality from Georgia State University. She currently serves as the Research Director for youthSpark, an Atlanta-based non-profit focused on ending the commercial sexual exploitation of youth through victim services and demand-reduction strategies. She is a member of the interdisciplinary research collective The Race and Racism in Contemporary Biomedicine Working Group, and provides research support for gender violence advocacy groups in the Southeast. Her research has been published in the academic journal Criminal Justice Studies, Sociation Today, and in a social problems textbook published by Oxford University Press.
