Current Research > CAPS Faculty and Staff > Megan L. Comfort, PhD Assistant Professor

Megan L. Comfort, PhD
Assistant Professor

Megan Comfort is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at UCSF and a visiting fellow at the Mannheim Centre for Criminology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She received her PhD in Sociology from LSE in 2003 and was awarded the Robert McKenzie Prize for her dissertation. She began working at CAPS in 2002 as a Research Specialist and was appointed Assistant Professor in 2007.

Dr. Comfort's current research focuses on how a man's incarceration affects the emotional, sexual, and practical aspects of male-female couples' interactions. She is the Principal Investigator of an NIMH-funded study of HIV risk among couples who are living in Oakland, California following the male partner's release from prison (for more detailed information, see: HIV Risk Among Male Parolees and Their Female Partners). She is a co-investigator on an NINR-funded study of women visiting their incarcerated partners at a northern Californian state prison for men (see: The HOME Project). Dr. Comfort also is a CAPS Methods Core Scientist with expertise in ethnographic methods, qualitative interviewing, and conducting research with vulnerable populations.

For her doctoral research, Dr. Comfort conducted ethnographic field work in the visitor waiting area at San Quentin State Prison and in-depth interviews with women with incarcerated husbands, fiancés, or boyfriends. Her book based on this research, Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison (University of Chicago Press, 2007) analyzes how the incarceration of a partner results in the “secondary prisonization” of women as the correctional facility infiltrates and systematically distorts their personal, domestic and social worlds.

In addition to her book, Dr. Comfort's publications include articles in Criminal Justice and Behavior, Ethnography, Journal of Sex Research, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Actes de la recherche en sciences socials, and Annual Review of Law and Social Science .

Research interests

HIV prevention, HIV risk behaviors, behavioral interventions, incarceration, parole, women, couples, people of color, poverty, qualitative methods, ethnography

Current research

Education

  • 2003, PhD (Sociology), Robert McKenzie Prize, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
  • 1998, MSc (Criminology), honors of Distinction, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
  • 1992, BA (Black Studies), magna cum laude, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA

Publications

Books
  • Comfort M. Doing Time Together: Love and Family in the Shadow of the Prison. The University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Articles
  • Comfort M, Grinstead O, Faigeles B, Zack B. Reducing HIV Risk Among Women Visiting Their Incarcerated Male Partners. Criminal Justice and Behavior , 2000; 27(1): 57-71.
  • Comfort M. ‘Papa's House': The Prison as Domestic and Social Satellite. Ethnography, 2002; 3(4): 467-499. Brazilian translation printed as ‘A casa do papai': A prisão como satélite doméstico e social. Discursos Sediciosos: Crime, Direito, e Sociedade , 2003; 8(13).
  • Comfort M. In the Tube at San Quentin: The ‘Secondary Prisonization' of Women Visiting Inmates. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography , 2003;32(1):77-107.
  • Comfort M, Grinstead O. The Carceral Limb of the Public Body: Jail Detainees, Prisoners, and Infectious Disease. Journal of the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care , 2004; 3(2)April/June: 45-48.
  • Comfort M, Grinstead O, McCartney K, Bourgois P, Knight K. ‘You Can't Do Nothin' in This Damn Place': Sex and Intimacy Among Couples with an Incarcerated Male Partner. Journal of Sex Research , 2005; 42(1): 3-12.
  • Grinstead O, Faigeles B, Comfort M, Seal D, Nealey-Moore J, Belcher L, Morrow K. HIV, STD, and Hepatitis Risk to Primary Female Partners of Men Being Released from Prison. Women and Health , 2005; 41(2): 63-80.
  • Comfort M. ‘C'est plein de mecs bien en taule!': Incarcération de masse aux États-Unis et ambivalence des épouses. (‘It's a Lot of Good Men Behind Walls!': Mass Incarceration in the United States and the Ambivalence of Partners.) Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales , 2007; 169: 22-47.
  • Comfort M. Punishment Beyond the Legal Offender. Annual Review of Law and Social Science , 2007, 3: in press.

 

Contact

Center for AIDS Prevention Studies
UCSF Box 0886
50 Beale St., Suite 1300
San Francisco , CA 94105
Voice: (415) 597-4961
Fax: (415) 597-9213
Email: Megan.Comfort@ucsf.edu