
Field of Study:
Gender Studies
Home Institution in the U.S.:
Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO
Host Institution in India:
The West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, West Bengal
Start Date/Month in India:
December 2024
Duration of Grant:
Six months
Mary (Dyan) McGuire
Dr. Mary (Dyan) McGuire is the director of the criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) programs at Saint Louis University (SLU). She also founded and directs the CCJ BA and JD program at SLU. She holds a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center and a PhD in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Prior to entering academia, she worked as a judicial clerk for the first female justice of the Missouri Supreme Court. She has also worked as an assistant attorney general for the State of Missouri and as an associate with Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal.
Dr. McGuire is a committed educator. She has received numerous teaching prizes, including the Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award and was recently named the Reichmann Professor for Excellence in Teaching at SLU. She has been spearheading efforts at inclusive, multicultural education at SLU and has developed a number of classes on the subject, including “Multiculturalism for CJ Professionals”. Her research interests involve the intersection of law and practice, systemic race and gender bias as well as violence that impacts women. Her work has been published extensively in peer-reviewed journals like the Journal of Criminal Justice and Law, Gender Issues, and Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health.
Dr. McGuire’s Fulbright-Nehru project is designed to expand students’ understanding of the problem of gender bias as manifested in social structures like the legal system and social arrangements like patriarchy and how these circumstances facilitate acts of violence and oppression against women and girls. As part of the project, she is teaching three classes at the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata: “Women’s Rights and International Law”; Understanding Serial Killers through Criminology”; and “Violence Against Women”. All three classes focus on gender equity, violence against women, and/or the social construction of crime, and is intended to expand, especially in the context of domestic and international legal systems, her students’ understanding of social forces influencing the lived experiences of women and girls.