Kristin Gates Cloyes, PhD, RN

Contact Information:

• Mailing Address:
• University of Utah
• College of Nursing
• 10 South 2000 East
• Salt Lake City, UT 84112-5880
• Phone: (801) 585-9496
• FAX: (801) 587-9838
• E-mail: kristin.cloyes@nurs.utah.edu

Background:

Since 1999 I have been a member of the Correctional Mental Health Project, an interdisplinary program of research and collaboration between the University of Washington and the Washington State Department of Corrections. The primary goal of this program has been to use joint resources and multiple methods to address problems associated with increasing numbers of people with mental illness in US corrections systems. I look forward to continuing such collaborative, interdisciplinary work in Utah.

Research Program/ Scholarly Activity:

My program of research explores how the most vulnerable groups in the US (i.e. the mentally ill, racial and ethnic minorities, the poor) are more likely to be subject to criminal justice and forensic psychiatric systems, and the effects of this disproportionate situation. I am also interested in how nurses and mental health workers in forensic practice work out tensions between professional and correctional discourses. Most recently I have been studying the issue of mental illness in supermaximum security prisons in WA State. What should "count" as mental illness, and how this definition should be acted on, is a hotly contested problem among all involved. My current work focuses on how mental illness is signified and performed in the everyday practices of institutional settings, and the consequences of these activities.

Two overarching themes tie my theoretical, methodological and research interests together: critical political theory and social justice. I use multiple methods, including statistical and textual analysis, in a framework that is informed and shaped by these themes. My scholarly interests aim to develop concrete methods to apply critical and poststructural inquiry to practice and analysis, and to integrate political theory and nursing theory.

Funded Research:

Recent Publications:

Cloyes, K.G., Lovell, D., Allen, D.G. & Rhodes, L.R. (accepted for publication). Assessment of psychosocial impairment in a Washington State supermaximum security unit sample. Criminal Justice and Behavior.

Allen, D.G. & Cloyes, K.G. (2005). The language of "experience" in nursing research. Nursing Inquiry, 12(2), 98-105.

Cloyes, K.G. (2002). Agonizing care: Care ethics, agonistic feminism and a political theory of care. Nursing Inquiry, 9(3), 203-214.

Lovell, D., Cloyes, K., Allen, D.G. & Rhodes, L. (2000). Who lives in Supermaximum custody: A Washington State study. Federal Probation, 64(2), 33-38.

Presentations:

Recent Awards: