Directors

Jody Clay-Warner, Ph.D.

Director, Owens Institute for Behavioral Research
Meigs Distinguished Professor, Sociology
website  |  jclayw@uga.edu
255A Brooks Hall  |  706-542-6094

Jody Clay-Warner is a Meigs Professor of Sociology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. She received a Ph.D. in sociology from Emory University and has been at UGA since 1998, where she previously served as director of the Criminal Justice Studies Program and as head of the Department of Sociology. She has been involved with OIBR since 2000, when as an assistant professor she participated in the grant mentoring program. In 2019, Clay-Warner was appointed associate director of the Institute.

Named director in August 2022, she provides strategic direction for the Institute, advocates for social and behavioral science research at UGA and externally she implements innovative programs to enhance grants administration and interdisciplinary research at UGA. She also oversees the OIBR Grant Development Program, leads faculty retreats, chairs the OIBR Executive Committee, interfaces with the Vice President for Research, Deans, Department Heads, and Faculty, and serves as an advocate for faculty affiliated with OIBR.

Clay-Warner’s research focuses on understanding responses to injustice. She uses laboratory experiments to understand the underlying processes that shape these responses, and she uses survey techniques to study the implications of these basic processes for reactions to real-world experiences of injustice, such as labor exploitation and criminal victimization. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of State.