Contacts

School of Criminology, University of Montreal.
Project entitled: “Creating Social Education on Jihadism: A Way to Counter Violent Extremism.” co-supervised by Dr. Lorne Dawson, Professor, Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo and Project Director, Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society and Dr. Vivek Venkatesh, Associoate Professor of Education, Concordia University, UNESCO co-Chair in Prevention of Radicalisation and Violent Extremism, and Director, Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance.  

Director, Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), City Life and Well-being: The Grey Zone of Health and Illness

Interests: Radical Interpretive Theory and Methodology (e.g, Ethnomethodology, Hermeneutics, Analysis), Culture, (e.g., Health, City, Urban/Rural, Ancient Athens), Power (e.g., Parent/Child), Socratic Tradition of Inquiry

Interests: Security, Policing, Resilience, Urban Governance, Emergencies & Disasters and Public Safety.

For Legal Studies undergraduate inquiries, please email: ls-associatechair@uwaterloo.ca. Book an academic advising appointment.

For research and teaching inquiries, please email: philip.boyle@uwaterloo.ca.

Interests: International Law, Global Justice, Political/Social Theory and Law

Interests: historical relation between law and capitalism that combines legal theory and political economy.

Dissertation/Research area

Patrick's dissertation research examines frontline social interactions between border services officers (BSOs) and members of various travelling publics. (Funded by a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship)

Stacey’s dissertation research focuses on online governance and self-regulation, community management and content moderation. Specifically, she is interested in exploring how online platforms' content moderation policies are developed and whose knowledge is valued in this process. 

Dissertation/ Research area

Youth crime, Social networks, Female delinquency

Interests: Population health, social inequality and the life course. Jointly appointed in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies and School of Public Health and Health Systems. Cross appointed to the School of Pharmacy.

Interests: Terrorism, Sociology of Religion, and Sociological Theory

Book an academic advising appointment

Pronouns: she/they

What to call me: Carry

Interests: Criminology, Legal Studies

Interests: Sociology of Health, Social Determinants of Health, Comparative Health Care Systems, Health, Illness and Society

I am a PhD candidate in Sociology and Legal Studies. My areas of study include criminology, political sociology, and social stratification and inequality. My current dissertation seeks to examine the 'defund the police' movement and what this would look like in Canada. I have completed comprehensive exams in social inequality with a specialization in Indigenous issues and qualitative research methods. 

Interests: Criminological theory testing, social influence dynamics, decision-making processes, politics and crime.

Jessica Gill is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies. Her research interests lie broadly at the intersection of gender-based violence (GBV), critical feminist thought, and technology studies. Her dissertation focuses on examining the barriers that victim-survivors of GBV encounter when attempting to access support services within the context of Ontario and, more specifically, seeks to explore counter-hegemonic approaches to tackling GBV. Jessica holds an M.A. in Health Policy and Equity Studies and a B.Ed. from York University, and a B.Sc. (Hon.) from the University of Toronto specializing in Mental Health Studies and Women and Gender Studies.

Research interests: gender-based violence; intimate partner violence; intersectionality; critical race theory; postcolonial thought; feminist legal theory; social and public policy; qualitative and mixed-method research; technology; neoliberalism; social inequality; sociology of education; knowledge mobilizatio

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology and Anthropology (Concordia University)

PhD, Department of Sociology (York University)

MA, Cultural Studies (Queen’s University)

BA, Peace Studies and Political Science (McMaster University)

Research and Teaching Areas

Sociology of health, public health surveillance, medico-legal governance, digital mass media, institutional ethnography

Current Research

My overall research program examines how forms of public health and criminal legal regulation intersect with one another, and how knowledge of these hybrid health/crime issues circulates on digital mass media platforms. Much of my work has focused on the issue of HIV criminalization in Canada. I employ Dorothy Smith’s approach to studies in the social organization of knowledge to illuminate a broad range of coordinated activities (including those of police, public health officials, corrections officers, legal professionals, medical experts, news reporters, HIV activists, human rights advocates, and others) that produce, reproduce, and also disrupt the social relations of HIV criminalization.

My current research examines the social organization of HIV public health surveillance and attends to how these technologies come to bear on people living with HIV. This work takes the form of collaborative, community-centered research projects and a co-authored manuscript (with Alexander McClelland, Carleton University) on carceral public health practices.

Research Grants

2022 - Co-applicant, SSHRC Insight Development Grant. “Experiences of the Social Organization of HIV-Related Public Health Risks.” With Emerich Daroya, Martin French, Andrea Krüsi, Alexander McClelland (PI), and Maureen Owino.

2022 - Co-applicant, CIHR Catalyst Grant: HIV/AIDS and STBBI Community-Based Research. “Mapping The Pathway of Blood and Information Collected From HIV-Positive People in a Clinical Setting: Implications for Public Health Surveillance, Consent, and Criminalization.” With Emerich Daroya, Estelle Davis, Martin French, Andrea Krüsi, Alexander McClelland (PI), Ryan Peck, and Amy Wah.

2020 - Collaborator, SSHRC Connection Grant. “Centering Lived and Living Experiences of HIV Surveillance.” With Martin French et al.

Selected Publications

Books

Newswork and Policing Beyond the Police: The Social Organization of Crime Stories about HIV Criminalization. University of Toronto Press (forthcoming).

Journal articles

Hastings, C. (2022). Writing for Digital News About HIV Criminalization in Canada and the Sociotechnical Assemblage of Online News. The Canadian Review of Sociology. 1: 1-19.

Hastings, C; McClelland, A; Guta, A; Owino, M; Manning, E; Elliot, R; Gagnon, M; Molldrem, S. (2021). Intersections of Treatment, Surveillance, and the Criminal Law Responses to HIV and COVID-19. The American Journal of Public Health. 111(7): e1-e3.

Mykhalovskiy, E; Sanders, C; Hastings, C; Bisaillon, L. (2020). Explicitly Racialized and Extraordinarily Over-Represented: Black Immigrant Men in 25 Years of News Reports on HIV Non-Disclosure Criminal Cases in Canada. Culture, Health, and Sexuality. 23(6): 788-803.

Hastings, C; Mykhalovskiy, E; Sanders, C; Bisaillon, L. (2020). Disrupting a Canadian Prairie Fantasy and Constructing Racial Otherness: An Analysis of News Media Coverage of Trevis Smith's Criminal HIV Non-Disclosure Case. The Canadian Journal of Sociology. 45(1): 1-21.

Mykhalovskiy, E; Kazatchkine, C; Foreman-Mackey, A; McClelland, A; Peck, R; Hastings, C; Elliot, R.(2020). Human Rights, Public Health, and f-19 in Canada. The Canadian Journal of Public Health. 111: 975-979.

Fortier, C; Hastings; C. (2019). A Field of Dreamers on Stolen Land: Practices of Unsettling on the Recreational Softball Diamonds of Tkaronto. The Journal of Sport History. 46(2): 302-317.

Hastings, C.; Comer, L., and Mykhalovskiy, E. (2018). Review: Didier Fassin (Ed.) (2017). If Truth Be Told: The Politics of Public Ethnography. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 19 (2), 2-7.

Book chapters

Hastings C. and Mykhalovskiy, E. (2023). Reflections on Social Relations and the Single Institution Tendency in Institutional Ethnography. Luken, P. and Vaughn, S. Critical Commentary on Institutional Ethnography: IE Scholars Speak to Its Promise. Springer.

Mykhalovskiy, E., Landry, D., and Hastings, C. (2023). ‘I just feel like Toronto is becoming a massive cement slab:’ Residential nuisance noise as figuration. Fulton-Melanson, J. and James, R. What does the Right to the City Sound Like? The Ambient Dynamics of Urban Futures. University of Indiana Press.

Mykhalovskiy, E; Hastings, C; Comer, L; Gruson-Wood, J; Strang, M. (2021). Teaching Institutional Ethnography as an Alternative Sociology. Luken, P. and Vaughn, S. Handbook of Institutional Ethnography: 47-64. Palgrave McMillan.

Hastings, C. (2019). The Social Relations of Disclosure: Critical Reflection on Biological Citizenship in the Context of HIV Criminalization. Mykhalovskiy, E; Namaste, V. Thinking Differently About HIV/AIDS :261-281.University of British Columbia Press.

Community and Media Publications

Hastings, C.; Massaquoi, N.; Elliott, R.; Mykhalovskiy, E. HIV Criminalization in Canada: Key Trends and Patterns [1998-2020] (2022). HIV Legal Network.

Hastings, C.; McClelland, A.; Nicholson, V. (2021). It’s Time to End Criminal Prosecutions Against People Living with HIV. The Breach.

Hastings, C.; Kazatchkine, C., and Mykhalovskiy, E. (2017). HIV Criminalization in Canada: Key Trends and Patterns. Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.

Mykhalovskiy, E.; Hastings, C.; Sanders, C.; Hayman, M.; and Bisaillon, L. (2016). “‘Callous, Cold, and Deliberately Duplicitous:’ Racialization, Immigration, and the Representation of Criminalization in Canadian Mainstream Newspapers.” A report funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Centre for Social Research in HIV Prevention.

Selected Professional and Community Networks

Division Chair (2020 – 2023), Institutional Ethnography Division, Society of the Study of Social Problems.

Media Working Group Coordinator and Public Health Working Group, Canadian Coalition to Reform HIV Criminalization.

Graduate Supervision and Student Opportunities

I am happy to be on supervisory committees for graduate committees and honours student research in the following areas: sociology of health, public health surveillance, medico-legal governance, digital news media, police communications and public relations, institutional ethnography and approaches to qualitative research, sociology of sport.

Jamal's doctoral research examines topics of business contingency planning and emergency preparedness. 

Research area 

Contingency Planning, Policy, Health, Health and Safety, Law and Society, Governance, and Research Methods.

Interests: Migration and mobility studies; Border studies; Political sociology, Critical development and humanitarian aid

Advisor for undergraduate students with last names A-K.

Book an academic advising appointment

Dissertation/ Research area

Interpretive Sociology, Heritage, Museums, Culture, Art

Dissertation/Research area

Patrick's dissertation research examines frontline social interactions between border services officers (BSOs) and members of various travelling publics. (Funded by a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship)

I am a PhD student in the department of Sociology & Legal Studies, substantively focused on educational sociology. My research investigates the institutionalization of experiential education in Ontario universities. Using organizational theory and qualitative methods I am analyzing the impact this process has on the professional logics of organizational actors, and the broader implications of shifting institutional logics in the field of higher education. Complimentary research interests include social theory, work and organizations, and qualitative research methods. 

Interests: History of Education; Sociology of Education; Gender, Democracy and Schooling; The Teaching Profession; Civics Curriculum; Global Citizenship Education; Oral History; Qualitative Methods

Interests: Canadian Political Economy, Primary Resources, Sociology of the Family, Rural Sociology, Social Change, Gender, Feminist and Marxian Theory

Interests:

• How opinions, beliefs, identities, worldviews, and lifestyle preferences form and evolve over the life course
• Public opinion dynamics, lifestyle preferences and politics, and large-scale cultural change (especially when it comes to opinions on collective risks such as environmental change, questions of science and expertise, surveillance and privacy, and authoritarianism and populism)
• The workings and impacts of coordinated information operations (especially disinformation campaigns and censorship) on a population scale
• Methods and models in computational social science and data science, especially network science and social network analysis, probabilistic and generative modelling, computational text analysis, and reproducibility

Interests: Surveillance, Security, Policing, Technology, Social Control / Regulation, Privacy, Human Rights. 

Ali Mostolizadeh is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Waterloo. Ali is interested in applying creative arts and visual methodologies to his research. As a cinematographer and documentary filmmaker, Ali has been involved in making the films representing findings of his academic works through reinforcing stories of non-dominant communities. Ali's research interests include: Mobilities, Migration, Tourism and Identity, Social  justice, Displacement, Visual methodologies, Documentary methodologies.Ali's PhD project, under supervision of Dr. Suzan Ilcan- unpacks Australia's off-shore detention regime for asylum seekers and develops insight into the alternative knowledge system and the counter-narratives that have been shaped by individual and collective resistance of detained refugees on Manus Island. Specifically, Ali's study sheds light on the resistance, advocacy and survival of Behrouz Boochani who is globally known as the 'voice of Manus Island'. He has become a phenomenon and a public face of resistance to Australian off-shore detention. To identify the networks of resistance on Manus, a number of artists/activists/journalists/academics/ writers/former detainees who have collaborated with Boochani since 2013 were interviewed. Ali's dissertation includes a visual chapter which is a documentary film about resistance, advocacy and survival of Behrouz Boochani.

Interests: Criminology, Victimology, Sexuality and the Law, Gender

RDC Analyst, South Western Ontario Research Data Centre, Department of Sociology, University of Waterloo

Interests: Analysis of Complex Survey Data

Interests: Security and Policing, Borders and Governance, Regulation and Law, Social Theory

Dissertation/Research area

Manjit's research focuses on how the South Asian gang phenomenon in Western Canada has been problematized and governed by authorities and how various stakeholders (government and non-government actors) problematize risk..

Interests: Gender Inequality and Homelessness, Single Parents Mental Health, Aboriginal Poverty and Canada's Furr-Families: The Role of Pets in the Health and Well-Being of Canadians.

Interests: Symbolic Interaction, Social Psychology, Deviance, Classical Greek and Latin Scholarship, Rhetoric, Religion, Poetics and Entertainment, Education and Scholarship, Philosophy, Ethnohistory, Marketplace Activity, Management

website:  www.andreaquinlan.net

Interests: Transition to adulthood, identity resolution, anthropomorphic identities/furry fandom/furries, youth, furscience.com co-founder

Dissertation Topic

Currently Rowland’s doctoral research draws upon the techniques of autoethnography and border thinking/border gnosis to examine the formation of First Nations & Native American identity within the biopolitical, affective, juridical and philosophical imaginings of the United States & Canada through his own lived experiences as a diasporic, urban and liminaly enrolled Indigenous person. Rowland’s work situates this identity formation within the structures of settler colonialism, in particular the logic of elimination, and examines how the official means by which it takes place effects a “biogenic extension of frontier homicide.” He also examines how self-determined and decolonial notions of identity within contemporary Indigenous community both mesh with and exist beyond official categorization, as well as the processes of new Indigenous identity formation, in particular within the urban setting.

Research area

Critical Indigenous Studies; Settler Colonial Studies; Coloniality & Modernity; Decoloniality & Decolonial Theory; Phenomenology; Genealogical Critique; Indigenous Identity; Politics of Refusal; Grounded Normativity; Biopower & Biopolitics; Ideology & Hegemony; Affect Studies & Affect Theory; Critique of Political Ontology; Historical Materialism.

Dissertation Topic

Kanika's doctoral research will explore the factors that contribute to the formation of youth perceptions of social injustice and how these perceptions of injustice impact criminal behavior and other life outcomes.

Research area

Juvenile Delinquency, Policing, Social Inequality, Criminal Justice Process 

Brian's dissertation research looks at the intersection between surveillance and new media. Specifically, he is interested in how software has come to structure identity politics and activism both online and off.  

Interests: Policing, Criminology, Youth justice, Quantitative and qualitative research methods

Krystle Shore is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology & Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo. Her research interests lie at the intersection of policing, surveillance technologies, and public health interests, and include critically examining the narratives supporting surveillance as a solution to various social problems (e.g., the use of body-worn cameras to reduce police violence).

Krystle’s dissertation research explores the obscuring of public health and traditional security-based surveillance practices, and how such practices relate to broader trends in power and governance. For this research she is specifically examining the deployment of electronic location monitoring devices by police to track people who have cognitive impairments.

Krystle is also interested in the social forces at play within various trends in academia, such as the contemporary push for interdisciplinary research collaboration and knowledge mobilization.

Interests: Post-Colonial Feminist Thought, Gender Violence, Civil Society-State Relations, Governance and Regulation, Sociology of Law, Criminology

Dissertation/ Research area

Policing, Policing Strategies, HR management, organizational theory, research methods.

Interests: Jurisprudence and Critical Legal Theory; Labour Migration Law; Employment and Labour Law; Transformative Law and Economics; The Idea of Nation, Citizenship and Home; De-coloniality and Post-structuralism; Eco-philosophy, Ecology and Law

Interests: Border criminology; immigration detention; deportation; punishment; parole and re-entry; postcolonial, antiracist, and feminist thought; critical border and migration studies; qualitative research methods

Interests: Methodology and Statistics, Rural Sociology, Social Psychology, Environment and Resources

Interests:  Sociology of Digital Media, Governance of Online Spaces; Game and Software Studies, Surveillance Studies, Qualitative Methods

Interests: sociology of religion; quantitative methods; Canadian studies; immigration and ethnicity; social change; political sociology

Dissertation/ Research area

Policing, police discretion and decision-making, policing strategies, homicide studies, socio-legal responses to crime, research methods. Funded by a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship.

Research Interests: Criminology, Domestic Violence

Research Supervisor: Dr. Rashmee Singh

Interests: Sociology of gender, Critical Femininities, Femme Theory, intersectional analyses, sexual and gender diversity, gender and power, violence, prejudice and discrimination, feminist theory, queer theory, transgender studies, social inequality, femininities, femme, femmephobia, anti-femininity, fashion and aesthetics.

Areas of Study:  Terrorism, Radicalization, National Security, Deviance 

My dissertation focuses on how and why academic research into terrorism is used by intelligence professionals in Canada and the factors or barriers that may be affecting the use of this research. Further, it looks at how we can improve the mobilization of knowledge and research as it relates to countering terrorism and violent extremism.

For his PhD research, Nima is studying terrorism and political violence, and more specifically the motivations for religious terrorism.  His dissertation examines the role of religiously inspired fears as a motivation for jihadist terrorism.

My research areas include interpersonal violence, victimization, and policy. My dissertation research focuses on institutional responses to technology-facilitated sexual violence (e.g. revenge porn, dissemination of images, etc.). My research is qualitative and utilizes interviews, digital methodologies, and unobtrusive document analyses.

My research area– Examining the forms and effects of human trafficking in Ethiopia, while comparing the country’s longstanding history of ethnic federalism and its possible connection to human trafficking. 

Area’s of Interest – Analyzing how racial, ethnic, and national identities are created and enacted, human trafficking, international migration, race relations, refugee status and immigration. 

I am currently in my first year as a Ph.D candidate and my research is interested in terrorism, nationalism and social systems theory. Particularly, I am interested in Canadian counter-terrorism policy and how it uses the nation to organize a response to terrorism in its various forms. Theoretically, I am influenced by the work of Niklas Luhmann and Talcott Parsons, though this is a recent development. My past research was heavily influenced by Paul Rabinow’s interpretation of Michel Foucault for the purposes of anthropology and ethnography. Both my BA (Social Anthropology) and MA (Social Anthropology) were completed at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. My hometown is Sackville, New Brunswick, a small-town near the New Brunswick-Nova Scotia border that is on traditional Mi’kmaq land and is called home by generations of settlers, Acadian, Mi’kmaq, Maliseet and Métis folk.

My research on social policy involves a critical focus on Harm Reduction and the Social Determinants of Health in Ontario. I am in the MA Thesis Coop option.

Abeer has a BA from University of Toronto and is currently an MA Student in the Social and Legal Studies coursework program. Her area of interest is in policymaking, Law and Society, and postcolonial, feminist, and Marxist discourse.

Jacob Legault-Leclair est actuellement étudiant au doctorat en sociologie à l’Université de Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Il se spécialise en méthode quantitative, en sociologie de l’immigration et la sociologie des religions. Sa thèse de maîtrise, effectuée en sociologie à l’Université d’Ottawa, portait sur les déterminants culturels de la migration entre l’Ontario et le Québec. Il a aussi travaillé les caractéristiques sociodémographiques des Québécois relativement à la Loi 21. Dans le cadre de ses études doctorales, il s'intéresse au rapport entre la migration et la sécularisation et aux liens qu'ont ces transformations démographiques sur la gestion politique du religieux au Canada et en France.

Jacob Legault-Leclair is currently a PhD student in sociology at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He specializes in quantitative methods, sociology of immigration and sociology of religion. His master's thesis, carried out in sociology at the University of Ottawa, focused on the cultural factors shaping migration between Ontario and Québec. He also worked on the socio-demographic characteristics of Québecois in relation to Bill 21. His doctoral work focuses on the relationship between migration and secularization and how these demographic transformations affect the political regulation of religion in Canada and France.

I am currently in my second term of the MA Sociology program, intending on completing a Major Research Paper within the realm of Political Sociology and Social Policy. I will be focusing primarily on sexual violence and the law in my research.

My dissertation examines how the various players within an Indigenous Peoples' court influence the court process and make decisions in relation to the court’s cases. Specifically, I look at how, and whether, court officials consider the multiple ways in which structural oppressions related to gender and Indigeneity render women uniquely vulnerable to criminalization.

My research interests more broadly are justice system alternatives and restorative justice. 

Jenniffer's doctoral research offers a feminist genealogy of the institutional practices and responses to women victim-offenders charged with domestic assault in the first Domestic Violence Courts in various jurisdictions across Ontario. This historical account will trace how the criminal justice system came to be seen by many as a logical component of the violence against women movement and its consequences on women criminalized for domestic violence.

Research Area: violence against women, social inequality, law and society, social movements, mixed methods

Tyler’s dissertation research is focused on methods of studying misinformation, with an emphasis on its production, patterns of dissemination, and social impact. This research includes large-scale data analysis using computational social science methods from the fields of social network analysis, machine learning, and natural language processing. Most of this analysis is performed in Python and is focused on data from Reddit and Twitter.

Research: the development and uptake of Bayesian statistical methods in Social Scientific and Social Network Analytic contexts.  

Ashley's research focuses on peer influence and offending. Her current dissertation research explores the motivations behind peer pressure and the strategies that accompany them.  

Ivy’s research mainly focuses on migration policies, immigrants & refugees, wellbeing of older immigrants, governance, mobility politics, and social justice. Specifically, her dissertation critically examines the parents/grandparents sponsorship (PGP) immigration program from a governmentality perspective, as well as explores lived experience of PGP immigrants and analyzes how the interplay of immigration policy with other social, economic, cultural, and political factors shapes and affects the life trajectory, wellbeing and ageing of older Chinese immigrant parents in Canada.