School of Journalism

Dr. Bell is currently seeking graduate and undergraduate students eager to conduct research of the Internet & social media. Also, students eager to learn Computational sociology/social science methods or digital analytics (incl. social media analytics) and tools such as Python, R, SAS Enterprise Miner, Gephi, QGIS, etc. are always welcome.

Valarie Bell joined the UNT faculty in the fall of 2017 as part of Mayborn’s new Master of Science in Digital Communication Analytics program. Her role includes teaching and developing new courses for the program.

Education:

Doctor of Philosophy in computational sociology with specialization in stratification and inequality, Texas Woman’s University

Master of Arts in Social Psychology with research emphasis in wrongful convictions, police interrogation methods, and the criminal justice system’s fundamental injustices, The University of Nevada, Reno

Master of Arts in Forensic Psychology with research emphasis in false-confession-based wrongful convictions and police interrogation methods, The Illinois School of Professional Psychology, Chicago

Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy with a sociology minor, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Experience:

A native of Chicago, Valarie is the first in her family to complete college and graduate school.

Prior to graduate school, she spent a decade in industry as a marketing development manager working with Fortune 500 companies to develop and launch new brands through innovate marketing strategies. She also managed national product recalls and crisis communications for both international and national corporations in the medical device, pneumatics, and superconductor industries.

During her graduate studies she successfully published seven scholarly works and conducted research at the National Judicial College, the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, and for the Innocence Project. She also developed methodological expertise in both advanced quantitative and qualitative methods as a computational social scientist. She has conducted research in the areas of social media and the Internet, digital norms enforcement, deviance and psychopathic and sociopathic criminal behavior, wrongful convictions based on police-induced false-confessions, pro-social and pro-environmental behavior, social inequality and social mobility.

Valarie is committed to mentoring students to help them build a strong methodological background with proficiency in both quantitative and qualitative techniques. Making students partners in her research, while encouraging them to pursue their own research, is a major teaching priority.

Honors and Awards:

Faculty mentor of the winning team, “The Stethoscopes.” Mayborn J-School Hackathon. 2017. University of North Texas.

Annual Sociology Graduate Student Researcher of the Year. 2016. Texas Woman’s University.

Nominee. Annual TWU Graduate Student Researcher of the Year. 2016. Texas Woman’s University