José Miguel Cruz
José Miguel Cruz is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice and director of the Center for the Administration of Justice. Before becoming Director of CAJ, Jose Miguel served as Director of Research in LACC, where he secured research grants from the State Department, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the Tinker Foundation, USAID, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), UNICEF, and Open Society Foundations (OSF), among others.
Dr. Cruz earned his PhD in political science at Vanderbilt University after completing his master’s degree in public policy at St. Antony's College, Oxford University. Before joining FIU, and for more than ten years, he served as the director of the Institute for Public Opinion (IUDOP) at the Jesuit-run University of Central America (UCA) in San Salvador. IUDOP has been one of the premier public opinion research centers in Central America since the 1980s.
He is considered one of the pioneers in the study of criminal violence in Central America and Latin America, and the first to study Central American transnational gangs comparatively.