Peter C. Hainer

A.B., Brown University
M.A., Brandeis University
Ph.D., Brandeis University

Peter Hainer received an A.B. in Anthropology from Brown University in 1969 and promptly found himself in Boston's Grove Hall neighborhood as a community organizer and VISTA volunteer working with welfare recipients. For 15 years he lived in Boston's Mission Hill neighborhood with his family and was active in community affairs and a board member of the Neighborhood Housing Service. During this time he pursued and earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Brandeis University, doing anthropology field work on family and household composition in Boston's African-American community.

Since 1974, he has been teaching and working as an administrator at Curry College in Milton and is currently Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Sociology and Criminal Justice Department. In the late 70's and for the next 15 years he consulted and engaged in research for the U.S. Census Bureau's Center for Survey Methods Research in Washington, D.C., including work on under enumeration and the decennial count, household organization, and ethnicity. He has continued anthropological field work intermittently but continuously for 30 years with over 7000 hours of observation with his informants in Roxbury and Dorchester. He has worked closely with police officers in the field in a number of communities since 1976 and, in recent years, has been a civilian member of two strategic planning groups for the Bureau of Professional Development with the Boston Police Department and an active member of the Regional Community Policing Institute for New England, serving on committees.