Leanne Trapedo Sims is an American scholar and social justice activist. She is the Daniel J. Logan Professor of Peace and Justice and Chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. She is the author of "Reckoning with Restorative Justice: Hawaiʻi Women’s Prison Writing" (2023).
Background.
Trapedo Sims was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, the daughter of geriatrician Dr. Farrol Sims (1937–2020) and Jewish educator Lilian Sims (née Trapedo). The Sims family immigrated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the late 1970s.
Education.
Trapedo Sims attended the University of Wisconsin, earning a B.A. in English. She received M.A. degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (Creative Writing and Literary Studies), New York University (Performance Studies) and Fordham University (Education).
As a doctoral student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Trapedo Sims undertook feminist ethnographic research at the Women’s Community Correctional Center in Kailua, Hawaiʻi, and taught creative writing classes there. This research is the foundation of her book "Reckoning with Restorative Justice: Hawaiʻi Women’s Prison Writing". She received her Ph.D. in American Studies in 2017.
Professional career.
Trapedo Sims has held faculty positions at Northeastern University (2016–17), Pace University (2017–18), Stockton University (2018–19, where she had the title "activist in residence") and Northern New Mexico College (2020–21).
Since 2021, she has been the Daniel J. Logan Professor of Peace and Justice at Knox College, where she is creating an interdisciplinary program in Peace & Justice Studies. She has also established a prison education program at nearby Hill Correctional Center. It includes Inside-Out classes in which Knox undergraduates study together with incarcerated men within the prison walls.
She is an active member of Illinois Humanities, the Peace and Justice Studies Association, the European Forum for Restorative Justice, the Illinois Coalition for Higher Education in Prison, and the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison.