Jack Gibbs

Centennial Professor and Chair of Sociology and Anthropology Emeritus

Jack P. Gibbs graduated with his PhD from University of Oregon in 1957. Over the course of his graduate studies he was a Fulbright Scholar and awarded a Carnegie Fellowship. In addition to holding a faculty position at Vanderbilt, Gibbs also held taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Texas, Austin, Washington State University, and the University of Arizona.  At Vanderbilt, he was the Centennial Professor of Sociology, as well as chaired the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.

Dr. Gibbs has well over 170 publications, including scholarly articles in referred academic journals and books. He has received numerous scholarly honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, election as a fellow of the American Society of Criminology, and recipient of the 1983 Edwin Sutherland Award from the American Society of Criminology. His research areas included suicide, status integration, research methods, urbanization and technology, sociology of law, criminal deterrence, conceptions of deviant behavior, capital punishment, social control, and terrorism. He is author of highly influential books Sociological Theory Construction, Crime, Punishment, and Deterrence, and Norms, Deviance, and Social Control: Conceptual Matters.