Contacts

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

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

Institutional ethnography, medical sociology, public health surveillance, medico-legal governance, digital mass media

Courses Taught

LS 330/SOC 304: Media and Crime

SOC 248: Health, Illness, and Society 

SOC 440/LS 496: Health, Surveillance, and Law 

SOC 725: Graduate Seminar in the Sociology of Health 

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.

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

Digital News and HIV Criminalization: The Social Organization of Convergence Journalism. University of Toronto Press (December 2024).

Journal articles

Hastings, C., French, M., McClelland, A. et al. (2023). Criminal Code reform of HIV non-disclosure is urgently needed: Social science perspectives on the harms of HIV criminalization in Canada. Can J Public Health. 115: 8–14. https://doi.org/10.17269/s41997-023-00843-9

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

Fortier, C. and Hastings, C. (2023). “Let’s Make Baseball!: Practices of Unsettling on the Recreational Ball Diamonds of Tkaronto/Toronto.” In Forsyth, J., O’Bonsawin, C., Field, R., and Phillips, M.G. (Eds.) Decolonizing Sport. Fernwood Publishing.

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.

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

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

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

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:  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

Department of Sociology and Legal Studies 

SSHRC Doctoral Fellow 

Research Interests

My research interests lie at the intersection of the sociology of education, child and youth studies and social policy. My dissertation broadly examines educators’ perspectives on school violence in Ontario, with a focus on how institutional policies and procedures shape their professional practice when responding to and reporting violent incidents. Drawing on qualitative methods, this study aims to understand the everyday realities educators face when navigating school safety issues.

Previously, my M.Ed. research explored Black youths’ disciplinary experiences, particularly their reintegration to school following suspensions. This work highlighted the broader institutional and interpersonal dynamics that influence students’ experiences with disciplinary practices.

Select Publications

• Aurini, J., LaCroix, E., Iafolla, V., Brisbane, M., & Dreesha, M., (2025). Qualitative student mobility research in Canada: Existing contributions an scholarly recommendations. Canadian Journal of Higher Education. https://www.cjhe-rces.ca/index.php/cjhe/article/view/190107/186745
• Bundy, J. T., Rhodes, V., Brooks, M., Brisbane, M., & Delia Deckard, N. (2023). All things considered: A collaborative critical autoethnography of emerging racialized scholars. International Journal of Qualitative Methods.
• Edwards, T., Brisbane, M., Laylor, A., Chowdhury, R., Parada, H., & King, B. (2023). “I wasn’t enrolled”: Exploring the educational narratives of Black youth navigating out-of-home care in Ontario’s child welfare system. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-023-00955-8

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. 

Research Interests

My research interests encompass migration studies, borders and borderlands, gender studies, and critical masculinity studies. My PhD dissertation investigates how bordering, understood as a multi-scalar assemblage enacted across mobility, border, and space, shapes gendered lives in the Turkey-Georgia borderlands following the 1988 opening of the Sarp border gate. I explore how a diverse range of actors, practices, and processes—including state policies, local patriarchal structures, and the everyday economic and spatial practices of locals—engage in various forms of borderwork, thereby shaping and being shaped by gender. Previously, my MA thesis examined the ways in which Kurdish women students in Istanbul, Turkey, have constructed their political subjectivities at the crossroads of education and politics.

Select Publications

• Ilcan, S., Ensari, P., & Gonzalez Balyk, L. (Eds.). (2025). From antagonism to care: Reimagining academic freedom and justice in higher education. Studies in Social Justice. (In press).
• Aglietti, C., Delaney, C., Ensari, P., Ghidoni, E., Harroche, A., Still, A. & Türker, N. (2023). (Better) stories from the pandemic. Örebro University Press.
• Ensari, P. (2021). Book Review: Şule Can, Refugee Encounters at the Turkish-Syrian Border: Antakya at the Crossroads. Routledge: London and New York, 2019. International Migration, 59(2), 266-268.
• Ensari, P. (2021). Book Review: Ayşe Çağlar and Nina Glick Schiller, Migrants and City-Making: Dispossession, Displacement, and Urban Regeneration, Urban Geography.

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

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

Research Interests

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

Research Interests 

My research interests include settler-colonialism, mainly in the context of human rights and international law, and how Canada’s immigration policies are impacted by its own colonial history. My PhD dissertation research explores the lived experiences and motivations of pro-Palestine activists in southern Ontario during the genocide of 2023 – 2025, within the framework of social movement theory. Understanding this can assist in knowing how to motivate others for this and other social justice movements. I believe that all sociological research should have a practical application.

Select Publications

Chapter in Edited Collection

• 2021. Fantina, R. Chapter 5: Government: Calling on Racism to Run Federal and State Governments. Duke W. Austin and Benjamin P. Bowser (ed.) Impacts of Racism on White Americans in the Age of Trump. 55- 70. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Book Review

• 2024. Fantina, R. Liberal White Supremacy: How Progressives Silence Racial and Class Oppression. Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 53(2): 118 – 120. https://doi.org/10.1177/009430612412271

Books

• 2022, Fantina, R. Settler-Colonialism in Palestine and Kashmir. New York: Independent Press.
• 2020, Fantina, R. Propaganda, Lies and False Flags: How the U.S. Justifies its Wars. North Carolina: Red Pill Press.
• 2020, Fantina, R. Occupied Palestine: Israel, the U.S. and International Law. North Carolina: Red Pill Press.
• 2013, Fantina, R. Empire, Racism and Genocide: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy. North Carolina: Red Pill Press.

Presentations

• 2025. Unveiling the Myth of Multiculturalism: Systemic Racism, Islamophobia, and Othering in Canadian Contemporary Refugee Policies (Co-presented with Neela Hassan and Meray Sedak). Canadian Law and Society Association Annual Conference. June 11 -13. Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
• 2025. The Lived Experiences of Pro-Palestine Activists during the Genocide of 2023 – 2025. Seventh Annual Socio-Legal Studies Graduate Symposium. 10 April. North York, Canada.
• 2025. Disrupting the Image of Canada’s Multicultural Immigration Policies: An Analysis of the Temporary Residence Visa Program for Palestinians (Co-presented with Neela Hassan). Annual Meeting of the Canadian Law and Society Association: Law and Society in an Age of Connections and Distraction. 21-22 February. Oshawa, Canada.
• 2023. The Crisis of Waiting in the Gaza Strip. Canadian Law and Society Association’s Midwinter Meeting, Brantford, Ontario, 3 – 4 February.
• 2022. The Impact of Racism on White Americans in the Age of Trump. Pacific Sociology Association Annual Conference, 7 – 9 April. Sacramento, United States.
• 2022. The Impact of Waiting on Recent University Graduates in the Gaza Strip. York University’s Socio-Legal Studies Graduate Student Symposium, April, 2022. Toronto, Ontario.

Research Interests:

Kaitlyn’s primary research interest is in policing. Her dissertation explores the “reach” of legal cynicism (i.e., the perception that the law and law enforcement actors are illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill-equipped to keep communities safe) by investigating the impact of American police violence on police-community relationships in Canada. She is analyzing 911 call data and interviewing racialized community members and front-line police officers to answer two key research questions:

1. Did the police murder of George Floyd affect crime reporting in racialized neighbourhoods in a large and racially diverse Canadian city?

2. Has the collective memory of George Floyd’s murder (a) increased legal cynicism among racialized communities in this jurisdiction, and (b) impacted relations between racialized individuals and front-line officers?

The project contributes a clear picture of the measurable (i.e., material) impact of Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis (Minnesota) on crime reporting in another geographic context and explores whether and how legal cynicism stemming from Floyd’s murder flourishes independently and symbolically from crime reporting.

Select Publications

• Hunter, K. (2025). Predicting Police Contact: Exploring the Impact of Legal Cynicism on Residents’ Willingness to Contact the Police. The Police Journal: Theory, Practice, and Principles. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X251350967
• Urbanik, M., Maier, K., Greene, C., & Hunter, K. (2025). “What if I call them The Smurfs?” Comparing Marginalized People Who Use Drugs’ Experiences and Interactions with Auxiliary and Sworn Police Officers. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice. http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12614
• Hunter, K., Giwa, S., & Broll, R. (2024). Black and Blue: Deconstructing Defund the Police. Journal of Crime and Justice, 47(3), 324–341. https://doi.org/10.1080/0735648X.2024.2309220
• Maier, K., Greene, C., Hunter, K., & Urbanik, M. (2024). “The ones in red:” People Who Use Drugs’ Experiences of the Janus-faced Nature of Police Volunteerism. Policing and Society, 35(2), 187–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2024.2392818

Policy Reports

• Hunter, K. (2022). Accessibility, Diversity, and Inclusion: Recommendations to Increase Diversity and Inclusion on the City of Guelph's Accessibility Advisory Committee [Research Report]. Guelph Lab and Community Engaged Scholarship Institute. Guelph, Ontario. https://hdl.handle.net/10214/27449

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. 

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 fifth 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.

Research Interests 

My research investigates the intersecting forces of religious, gendered, and state-driven discrimination experienced by Coptic Orthodox Christians (Copts) in Saudi Arabia. Specifically, I examine how systemic exclusions, such as the kafala (sponsorship) system, the “Expat Dependent Fees,” and entrenched patriarchal controls, not only drive forced migration but also shape post-migration experiences for Copts, especially women and children. My work contributes to critical migration studies, the sociology of religion, and Middle Eastern studies, offering grounded insights into the lived realities of marginalized communities. It aims to inform policy conversations on surveillance, religious freedom, and systemic inequities in transnational contexts.

Dissertation Title (in-progress): Navigating Exclusion: Religious, Gendered, and State-Driven Discrimination Shaping the Migration of Coptic Orthodox Christians from Saudi Arabia.

Affiliations & Leadership

• President, Graduate Student Association (GSA), University of Waterloo
• Member: Canadian Law & Society Association (CLSA)

Presentations

• Fantina, B., Hassan, N., & Sadek, M. (2025). Unveiling the Myth of Multiculturalism: Systemic Racism, Islamophobia, and Othering in Canadian Contemporary Refugee Policies [Presentation]. 2025 CLSA Annual Conference. University of Saskatchewan College of Law, Saskatoon, SK.
• Sadek, M. (2025). Faith Under Constraint: Exploring Resistance, Marginalization, and Migration of Coptic Orthodox Christians in Saudi Arabia [Presentation]. 2025 Graduate Student Conference. Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON.
• Sadek, M. (2023). Between Belonging and Exclusion: Examining Migration, Nationhood, and Anti-Coptic Sentiment of Afro-Indigenous Coptic Orthodox Christians in Cairo, Egypt and Coptic Orthodox Christian Migrants in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. [Presentation]. 2023 CrimSL Grad Conference. Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON.
• Sadek, M. (2019). Refugee Resettlement and Advocacy in Rural Italy. [Poster Presentation]. LA&PS DARE Project 2019. York University, Toronto, ON.

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.