- Scholarly Assistant Professor – Career
Biography
Ph.D., Portland State University, 2025.
Research Interests
As a sociologist, I am primarily concerned with power. My central research agenda examines the effects of power at the medico-legal borderland, specifically where the boundaries between policing and medicine become murky. At this intersection, I focus on law enforcement phlebotomy, where police officers draw blood from impaired motorists. Through theory development and with qualitative methods, I have explored how police phlebotomy is portrayed through news coverage, how officer phlebotomists make sense of their use of phlebotomy, and how police phlebotomy transforms impaired drivers into patient/suspects. My next research projects will continue to examine how police phlebotomy is experienced at various intersections of the medico-legal borderland, ranging from the patient/suspect perspective to the clinicians who screen people for substance use disorders after arrest and police blood draws. Ultimately, my work is concerned with how phlebotomy, as a tool of police power, affects the social problem of impaired driving, as well as the people in police custody.
In a collaborative vein, my secondary research agenda investigates the gendered and sexualized hierarchies of power in politics and the family.
Select Publications
- Johnson, A. K. (2026). “Significant bodily intrusions”: A theoretical exploration of law enforcement phlebotomy and the creation of the patient/suspect. Theoretical Criminology. [Online First.] DOI: 10.1177/13624806251412854
- Johnson, A. K. (2026). “There’s really no risk of injury”: News coverage of law enforcement phlebotomy & the discursive power of the police perspective. Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, 22(1), 145-165.
- Shafer, E., England, P., & Johnson, A. K. (2025). Views of adolescent sex and parent responsibility: Do religiously conservative Christians and Trump voters have a distinctive view? In Blair, S. L., & Sooryamoorthy, R. (Eds.). Contemporary Perspectives in Family Research: Sex and Sexuality within the Family Context, 25-41.