Leanne Trapedo Sims

From 2012-2016, Leanne Trapedo Sims conducted trans-disciplinary research as a
feminist ethnographer at the sole women’s prison in Hawai‘i— Women’s Correctional
Community Center. Her work interrogates the intersections of gender, Indigeneity,
violence and state power in the colonized zone of Hawai‘i.

Her book—Reckoning with Restorative Justice: Hawai‘i Women’s Prison Writing— is
under contract with Duke University Press and is forthcoming in 2022. Her work
appeared in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Autumn 2020 and in
Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 2018 special issue, “Mapping Gendered
Violence: Contemplating Conflict and Crisis in Contemporary Societal Struggles.”

Trapedo Sims is active in prison activism and coalition building in Philadelphia. She is
delighted to join Knox College as the Daniel J. Logan Assistant Professor of Peace and
Justice with early tenure. As program director, Trapedo Sims will shape a new,
interdisciplinary program, teaching at introductory and advanced levels. She plans to
build an Inside-Out Prison Exchange program with the nearby Henry C. Hill Correctional
Center; as well as establish a Restorative Justice Laboratory at Knox College. She
envisions the Lab as an incubator for local activists, artists, advocates, impacted
families and the inside community to address reparative justice and mass incarceration
in the Galesburg and Chicago areas.