| Currently on sabbatical and Visiting Scholar at University of Oslo |
PAS 2032
c2hastings@uwaterloo.ca
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)
Current Research
My research examines tensions between public health and criminal law in addressing social problems, and how knowledge about these issues circulates across institutions and digital media. Much of my work has focused on HIV criminalization in Canada.
My current projects use institutional ethnography to examine the social organization of communicable disease surveillance through collaborative, community-centered research on how public health data is gathered, interpreted, and put to use in practice.
I am also interested institutional ethnography as a sociological approach, and how it is taught, taken up, and applied across disciplines and empirical settings.
Graduate Supervision
I currently supervise graduate students who use critical sociological approaches to study issues related to health care, public health, and public health surveillance. I am also happy to serve on supervisory committees and honours theses in areas including medico-legal governance, digital news media, institutional ethnography, qualitative research methods, sociology of sport, and related fields.
Research and Teaching Areas
Institutional ethnography, sociology of health and illness, public health surveillance, medico-legal governance, digital mass media
Courses Taught
SOC 248: Health, Illness, and Society
SOC/LS 322: Field Research Methods
LS 330/SOC 304: Media and Crime
SOC 440/LS 496: Health, Surveillance, and Law
SOC /HLTH 725: Graduate Seminar in the Sociology of Health
Ongoing Research Grants
- 2025 -2027, SSHRC Insight Development Grant (PI): Mobility Data for Public Health? An Institutional Ethnography of the Promises (and Perils) of Emerging Surveillance
- 2026 – 2030, CIHR Team Grant: HIV/AIDS and STBBI Community-Based Research (co applicant): A Community Based HIV/STBBI Public Health Observatory
- 2026 – 2029, CIHR Project Gran (co-applicant): Improving Notification, Screening, and Integrated Guidance for Hospital Timely Sepsis Recognition in Niagara (INSIGHTS – Niagara)
Selected Publications
Books
- Digital News and HIV Criminalization: The Social Organization of Convergence Journalism. University of Toronto Press (2025).
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.
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
- Co – Chair, Institutional Ethnography Research Cluster, Canadian Sociological Association
- Board Member, Institutional Ethnography Working Group, International Sociological Association