Karen Hamer is a doctoral student in criminology at the University of Texas, Dallas. She has a MA in Education from the University of Auckland and a MSt in Applied Criminology, Penology, and Management from the University of Cambridge. In 2018, for her graduate thesis, she conducted a US-wide study on the experiences of volunteers who run theater programs in prisons. She is the founder and artistic director of Tin Roof Productions, and she has adapted two of Jane Austen’s novels into full-length musicals that have been performed in Colorado, England, and and New Zealand. She is also the Mum of 10 children. Karen taught Shakespeare as a volunteer at Fremont Correctional Facility in Canon City, Colorado, from 2015-2017.