Shadd Maruna is the Professor of Justice and Human Development at the Law School of Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland. Previously, he had been a lecturer for four years at the University of Cambridge's Institute of Criminology, and before that was an assistant professor for three years in the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He holds a Ph.D. in Human Development and Social Policy from Northwestern University (Chicago, USA) and his publications largely reflect this cross-disciplinary training.

In particular, his primary interests involve theories of desistance from crime, public opinion regarding law breakers, and the implications of both on ex-offender reintegration. His first book, Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives (American Psychological Association Books) was named the Outstanding Contribution to Criminology by the American Society of Criminology (ASC) in 2001. He is the co-editor of two new books with Willan Publishing on the subject of ex-prisoner coping and reintegration (After Crime and Punishment, 2004; The Effects of Imprisonment, 2005), and has recently co-authored the book Rehabilitation (Routledge, 2007) with Tony Ward. He is currently a Soros Justice Fellow. Previously, he has been a Fulbright Scholar and an H.F. Guggenheim Fellow. His Ph.D. study on the social psychology of ex-prisoner reintegration based in Liverpool (UK) was awarded the Phi Delta Kappa Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis Award for Northwestern in 1998. In 2004, he was named the Distinguished New Scholar by the ASC's Division of Corrections and Sentencing.