Broadly speaking, my research focuses on institutional harm toward marginalized populations within and beyond the criminal legal system, with a particular focus on LGBTQIA+ people.
Institutional Harm and LGBTQIA+ Populations
In particular, I am interested in how queer, trans, and nonbinary people navigate the risks of both formal (e.g. policing, criminalization, medical gatekeeping) and informal (e.g., social pressure, safety management) forms of regulation and discipline. I draw on existing literature on social control, organized abandonment, administrative violence, and homo- and transnormativity to examine how processes of control shape LGBTQIA+ people’s presentation and behavior across contexts.
I also examine forms of care and resistance devised by queer and trans people in response to these threats of institutional violence, political hostility, and resource scarcity. These include both individual strategies like presentation management and communal approaches like mutual aid and informal care networks, as well as participation in political protest movements.
My book on the above topics, Queer and Trans Risk and Resistance: Responses to Institutional Violence, will be published in spring 2027 by NYU Press.
News Depictions of Transgender People
I also explore the way trans people are portrayed in the public discourse as both victims and perpetrators of harm. My work in this area includes examinations of transgender homicide victims, trans women in true crime podcasts, and victimized trans men in news coverage. I’ve spoken about this research area to a wide variety of audiences, including giving a plenary talk at the 2022 National Crime Victim Law Institute Conference, a panel discussion hosted by the University of Oklahoma’s Carceral Studies Consortium and LGBTQ Research and Engagement Collective, and offering comment for this Teen Vogue piece.
Gender-Inclusive and Anti-Racist Teaching Pedagogies
As both a scholar and an educator, I am invested in finding ways to engage and support students from underrepresented and marginalized backgrounds. My work in this area includes examining the consequences of misgendering students, an upcoming survey project on trans and nonbinary people’s experiences in higher education, and the co-authored book Anti-Racist Criminology: Research, Teaching, and Public Engagement (with Valli Rajah and Janani Umamaheswar), coming in December 2026 from NYU Press.
Institutional Responses to Trauma, Harm, & Crisis
Lastly, I conduct research on the support and resources available to people who have experienced victimization, abuse, and mental health crisis situations. This includes projects examining institutional responses to intimate partner violence (IPV), experiences of IPV peer support workers, consequences of childhood maltreatment, LGBTQIA+ people’s social service access during the early COVID-19 pandemic.
I am a member of the Philadelphia Treatment Not Trauma Coalition, a group of practitioners and community members working to expand mobile crisis services within the city of Philadelphia, and have offered testimony to the Philadelphia City Council and the Philadelphia Citizens Police Oversight Commission on the harms of non-consensual crisis response.
Most recently, I have returned to an ongoing project conducted by Trans Lifeline on the experiences of crisis hotline callers and the need for more non-carceral resource options. You can read the team’s initial report here.
Selected Publications
Osborn, M. (2023). “Something could happen to you at any moment”: Safety, strategy, and solidarity among trans and nonbinary protesters against police violence. Critical Criminology, 31, 1025-1042. doi: 10.1007/s10612-023-09733-5.
Osborn, M. (2025). Groomers, gays, and gender ideology: Why the anti-LGBTQIA+ legislative backlash is a moral panic and why criminologists should care. Punishment & Society, 27(5), 959-983. doi: 10.1177/14624745251344568
Osborn, M. (2022). LGBTQIA+ people’s service access during the COVID-19 pandemic: Obstacles to care and provider adaptations. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, 35(2), 157-182. doi: 10.1080/10538720.2022.2053025.
