Stacey Cutbush Starseed

Dr. Stacey Cutbush Starseed is a senior social scientist and directs the Violence Prevention and Harm Reduction Program. Her primary area of expertise is human trafficking research, evaluation, and training and technical assistance. She served as the principal investigator for the National Institute of Justice (NIJ)-funded Trafficking in Persons grants: Measuring Outcomes in Services to Domestic Victims of Human Trafficking: Instrument Development and Testing, which was responsible for the development and testing of the Outcomes for Human Trafficking Survivors (OHTS) Instrument. Dr. Cutbush currently collaborates with the Texas Center for Child and Family Studies to provide training and technical assistance on the OHTS. She also served as the principal investigator for the NIJ-funded Identify, Respond, Prevent: Addressing Human Trafficking among Juvenile Justice– and Child Welfare–Involved Youth. Dr. Cutbush Starseed currently serves as the project director for the NIJ-funded Trafficking in Persons grant, Evaluation of the California Human Trafficking Victim Assistance Grant Program; and the Office for Victims of Crime-funded Improving Outcomes for Child and Youth Victims of Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance project. 

She has been invited to advise several federal agencies and congressional caucuses on human trafficking policy, measurement, evaluation, and training and technical assistance. She also has participated in several international panels and national expert working groups on human trafficking research and practice, including as an expert on the jointly funded OVC-OTIP Standards of Care for Anti-Trafficking Service Providers National Technical Working Group. Dr. Cutbush Starseed is committed to the translation of research to practice through the development of freely available, easily digestible, user-friendly products that policymakers and practitioners can understand and use. She has a background in direct service provision as a victim advocate in crisis response, emergency departments, and criminal courts and is adjunct faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.