Joel Wallman is Director of Research at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. In this role, Dr. Wallman shapes and guides the Foundation’s research agenda and programmatic activities.

Dr. Wallman joined the Foundation in 1991, serving first as Program Officer and then as Senior Program Officer.

An anthropologist by training, Dr. Wallman is a recognized expert on violent crime in the United States and Latin America, among other topics. In these areas, he has undertaken significant research and written extensively. He is currently a member of a group of criminologists working under an HFG grant to develop a crime-forecasting model for use by scholars and policymakers.

Dr. Wallman is co-author of “Did De-Policing Cause the Increase in Homicide Rates?” (Criminology and Public Policy 2019), “Understanding Mexico’s Drug Violence” (Journal of Conflict Resolution 2015), and “Illicit Markets and Violence” (Crime, Law and Social Change 2009). He co-edited The Crime Drop in America with Alfred Blumstein (Cambridge University Press 2005). He is author of “Unpacking Recidivism” (Criminology and Public Policy 2005) and Aping Language (Cambridge 1992). An associate editor of Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict, he has also published in Computer Applications in the Biosciences and Current Anthropology. 

Before joining the Foundation, Dr. Wallman taught at Columbia University, Rutgers University, and Hunter College of the City University of New York. He received his B.A., Summa Cum Laude, in anthropology from the University of Kansas and his Ph.D., with Distinction, in anthropology from Columbia.