B.S. University of Minnesota (Sociology of Law, Criminology, and Deviance)
M.A. Northwestern University (Sociology)
Ph.D. Northwestern University (Sociology)
J.D. Northwestern University
M.F.A University of Georgia (Screenwriting, expected 2026)
Kat Albrecht is an Assistant Professor in Criminal Justice Studies. She received her PhD in sociology and JD at Northwestern University. She is also currently finishing her MFA in screenwriting at the University of Georgia. Kat is a computational social scientist whose work sits at the intersection of the study of fear, data infrastructure, and empirical criminal law. She directs the Fear and Computational Law Lab, which studies how fear becomes intertwined with U.S. criminal law. The lab also explores fear in creative media like sound, film, and painting. Kat is the Executive Director of the SCALES OKN, a court data non-profit, and the North American Director of the Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science that offers free and open-source computational science training to students and faculty all around the world.