Lisa Avalos

Professor Avalos joined the Maine Law faculty in 2026. She is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar who focuses her scholarship in the areas of criminal law and human rights, with a particular emphasis on sexual offenses and gender-based violence. During the 2024-2025 academic year, she was a Fulbright Scholar at Queen Mary University London, and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies in London. She is the recipient of End Violence Against Women International’s Visionary Award. At Maine Law, she teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Evidence, and related courses.

Professor Avalos’s articles have been published in the University of Illinois Law Review, Connecticut Law Review, Case Western Reserve Law Review, Brooklyn Law Review, Nevada Law Journal, Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Fordham International Law Journal, Wayne Law Review, and others. Her book, She Must Be Lying to Us! When Reporting Rape Becomes a Crime, is forthcoming with New York University Press.

Prior to joining the Maine Law faculty, Professor Avalos was Professor of Law at Louisiana State University Law Center where she was Co-Director of the Pugh Institute for Social Justice and held the Hermann Moyse Professorship. She was also on the faculty at the University of Arkansas School of Law and held a visiting faculty position at Georgetown University Law Center. Before entering academia, Professor Avalos was an associate at McDermott Will & Emery in New York City and at Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg in Chicago. Prior to attending law school, she was an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa.

She holds a J.D. from New York University School of Law, Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Sociology from Northwestern University, and a B.A. in Psychology from Northwestern University.