Scott Hunt

• Associate Dean

Bio

Contact Information

• Department: College of Justice, Safety & Military Science
• Office: Stratton 345
• Mailing Address: Stratton 345
• Email: scott.hunt@eku.edu
• Phone: 859-622-1160
• Office Hours:
• Web Page: College of Justice, Safety & Military Science

Bio

Dr. Scott Hunt is chair and a full professor in the School of Justice Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln in 1991. He served 14 years on the Sociology faculty at the University of Kentucky, rising to the rank of tenured, Associate Professor (1991-2005). He has served on the School of Criminal Justice’s faculty at Eastern Kentucky University since 2005.

Dr. Hunt has been published in a variety of peer-reviewed research journals, including Deviant Behavior, Symbolic Interaction, The Sociological Quarterly, Perspectives on Social Problems, Sociological Inquiry, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, and Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, Rural Sociology. He is coauthor (with Pamela Wilcox and Kenneth Land) of Criminal Circumstance: A Dynamic Multicontextual Criminal Opportunity Theory. His current research interests include the connection between pathological gambling, crime, and the criminal justice system; violence against migrant women; natural law theory; religion’s influence on the history of criminal justice; identity construction; and social movement cultures. While most of Dr. Hunt’s research has been qualitative, he has also used quantitative methods. Dr. Hunt was editor of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography for five years, 2004-2009.

As a first generation college student, Dr. Hunt prioritizes his teaching and advising roles with students, both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as his service responsibilities to the discipline, university, college, school, and community. His philosophical orientation toward teaching and service (and scholarship more generally) is an attitude of servant leadership, which seeks to share power, to put others’ needs first, and to help people (especially students) develop and perform as highly as possible. His teaching interests are primarily grounded in theory, ethics, and research methods, as well as his substantive foci on pathological gambling, natural law, identity construction, and religion and criminal justice. He enjoys working with students who have academic ambitions as well as though who are considering careers in the field of criminal justice itself. Dr. Hunt takes an active role in his community, serving on the Board of Director of the Kentucky Council on Problem Gambling. 

Courses