Dr. Marijana Kotlaja is a Senior Associate at Justice System Partners (JSP). Her work focuses on violence prevention and public policy, policing, cross-comparative criminology, communities and crime, and juvenile delinquency. With over 10 years of experience conducting research and teaching in higher education institutions, Dr. Kotlaja has expertise in mixed-methods research, research design and methodology, community-based participatory research and transnational research.  She has led several evaluation studies examining the effectiveness of violence prevention and intervention programs, as well as broader social impacts of criminal justice policies.  

Her passion for criminology was sparked during her early travels to Southeastern Europe, where she observed firsthand how many theories of criminal behavior fall short in different cultural contexts. This experience led Dr. Kotlaja to explore how crime and justice are understood and addressed across different contexts. Her recent research is featured in Crime & Delinquency, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, European Journal of Criminology, and Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice. She received her PhD from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.