Colin Hastings

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 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

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.