A Scholar for Justice
Belén Lowery-Kinberg
Criminal Justice Professor
A.A., 2009
Dr. Belén Lowery-Kinberg had been homeschooled and had never stepped foot into a classroom until she attended Palm Beach State College.
It was a major leap for her, but she quickly found a home in PBSC’s Dr. Floyd F. Koch Honors College her first semester. “That involvement in Honors College committees and conferences gave me a lot of confidence that I was missing,” she said. She also met her future husband, Dr. Eli Kinberg, who was a fellow student in the Honors College.
She completed the Associate in Arts degree in 2009 and then transferred to Florida Atlantic University to complete her bachelor’s degrees in linguistics and Spanish. While at FAU, she took a class in forensic linguistics, which sparked her interest in the field. “I realized this is the field that I wanted to work in after college.”
She completed a Master of Arts degree in Forensic Linguistics at Hofstra University in 2013 and her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Justice, Law and Criminology at American University in 2017. Her research focused on police and citizen interactions, wrongful convictions, and false confessions, and her research has been published multiple times in peer review journals.
A highlight of her educational pursuits came when she was tapped to serve as a research assistant with President Obama’s Task Force in 21st Century Policing, created in the wake of the shootings deaths of unarmed black men.
Lowery-Kinberg starts a new position as an assistant professor of criminal justice at St. Francis College in Brooklyn this fall.