Current Research Activities
Dr. Shahid Alvi
Dr. Nawal Ammar
Dr. Sasha Baglay
Dr. Liqun Cao
Dr. Carla Cesaroni
Dr. Anthony Chan
Dr. Kimberley Clow
Dr. Wesley Crichlow
Dr. Brian Cutler
Dr. Walter DeKeseredy
Dr. Aziz Douai
Dr. Steven Downing
Dr. Molly Dragiewicz
Dr. Shanti Fernando
Dr. Judith Grant
Dr. Ronald Hinch
Dr. Alyson King
Dr. Ganaele Langlois
Dr. Sharon Lauricella (Loverock)
Dr. Amy Leach
Dr. Patrik Olsson
Dr. Mari Peepre
Dr. Barbara Perry
Dr. Teresa Pierce
Dr. Mojgan Rahbari
Dr. Hannah Scott
Dr. Phillip Shon
Dr. Diane Sivasubramaniam
Dr. Andrea Slane
Dr. Arshia Zaidi
Dr. Shahid Alvi is currently doing research on violence against immigrant women, community responses to hate crime (with Dr. Barbara Perry), and youth crime and its relationship to social exclusion. With Dr. Hannah Scott and Dr. Wendy Stanyon, he recently completed a research project on victimization of the urban homeless in Durham Region. Currently, he is analyzing data from another recently completed project on immigrant women's quality of life, and in particular, their experiences of racism.
Dr. Nawal Ammar's
research focuses on comparative criminology and justice. Her research explores issues related to battered immigrant women and service delivery, violence against women and children in Egypt and other Islamic societies, and environmental justice. Dr. Ammar's work has been used by human rights organizations, and the United Nations in making or recommending policy as well as in court cases to support asylum for abused immigrant women.
Dr. Sasha Baglay's research interests lie in the area of Canadian and comparative immigrationand refugee law. Her current research projects include security certificates and detention of non-citizens suspected of links to terrorist organizations; citizenship law and policy; refugee protection and assistance programs for victims of human trafficking and other issues of domestic and comparative immigration and refugee law.
Dr. Liqun Cao's main areas of research are theory and policing. Dr. Cao is currently involved with the study of public opinion on criminality, such as prostitution in Canada and in China. He also continues his tests of the validity of social support theory with cross-national data. His research essays have appeared in many national and international journals, including the top journals of
Criminology,
Justice Quarterly,
Journal of Criminal Justice, and
Policing.
Dr. Carla Cesaroni's
research seeks to examine the stress and adjustment of incarcerated individuals. Additionally, she is interested in the role of punishment in the criminal justice system and in the public psyche. For the last decade she has studied the experiences of adolescent males serving custodial sentences. She is currently conducting a study of the experiences of 200 adolescent males in detention in South Ontario. Other projects include understanding police perceptions of the use of technology and pubic perceptions of the punishment of youth.
Dr. Anthony Chan has published 5 books including:
Arming the Chinese: The Armaments Trade in warlord China Gold Mountain: The Chinese in the New World Li Ka-shing: Hong Kong's Elusive Billionaire Perpetually Cool:The Many Lives of Anna May Wong, 1905-1961 People to People: An Introduction to Communication.
Dr. Chan has published more than 30 articles in mostly peer review journals, many book reviews and essays in academic journals and the Globe and Mail and Cinemaya.
He is currently researching and writing:
Dao and Communication and Chinese Canada.
His current filmmaking production is Series on filmmakers of color in Canada.
Dr. Kimberley Clow has multiple ongoing research projects in Psychology and Law and Social Psychology. One stream of research investigates how individuals involved in the justice system are perceived, the consequences of those perceptions, and possible ways of altering those perceptions. For example, Professor Clow and Professor Leach are currently working together to examine how individuals who have been wrongfully convicted are stereotyped. Professor Clow and Professor Cutler are planning studies that explore the role of stereotypes and decision-making in the judgments of defence lawyers. Another stream of research concerns gender stereotypes. Different research studies explore how gender is portrayed, perceptions of individuals in domains that are not stereotypic fortheir gender (e.g., men in nursing), cues that trigger gender stereotypes, and differing forms of masculinity and femininity. Professor Clow enjoys collaborative research with students, colleagues in the Faculty of Criminology, Justice & Policy Studies, colleagues from other faculties at UOIT, colleagues from other universities and colleagues from the community.
Dr. Wesley Crichlow's research interests focus on mediation, race, gender, power and cultural differences; youth restorative justice; Black youth gang violence; social inequality; theoretical and legal approaches to the study of race; human rights; LGBT rights; racial profiling; moral regulation; new immigrant employment & accreditation training; judicial reform; racialized community mediation as an alternative to criminal justice and section 15 criminal law charter challenges.
Dr. Brian Cutler has multiple ongoing Psychology and Law research projects with his students, colleagues from UOIT, and colleagues from other universities. One stream of research examines methods of improving the accuracy of eyewitness identification. This research investigates alternatives to traditional identification procedures. For example, his experiments examine whether the risk of false identification can be reduced--and the likelihood of accurate identification increased--through modification of instructions to eyewitnesses, alternative methods of presenting lineups and photo arrays, and the use of technology. Another stream of research is aimed toward understanding and reducing the risk of wrongful conviction. In this research, Professor Cutler and his colleagues have thoroughly examined the roles of legal safeguards designed to protect defendants from wrongful conviction resulting from mistaken eyewitness identification. Professor Cutler has recently launched (with Professor Clow) a new program examining the role of ineffective lawyering in wrongful conviction.
Dr. Walter DeKeseredy
focuses much of his work on creating safer and healthier public and private environments for women.
Working with researchers in Canada and other countries, Dr. DeKeseredy conducts quantitative and qualitative studies that generate data that can be effectively used to help end the psychological, physical,sexual, and economic abuse of women in intimate relationships and public places.
Dr. Dekeseredy's research has helped raise awareness about violence against women and has contributed to the creation of effective policies aimed at enhancing women's quality of life.
Dr.Walter DeKeseredy
is currently doing research on separated/divorced battered women who lack legal representation in the family court system, hate crime on university/college campuses, and rural separation/divorce sexual assault.
Dr. Aziz Douai's research focuses on mass media and global politics, and media reform in developing democracies. He is also interested in new media's socio-political impact, especially blogging and social networking sites, as well as international broadcasting and public diplomacy. He is the recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship (2001-2003) and the
Page Legacy Scholar Grant from Arthur W. Page Center (2007-2008).
Dr. Steven Downing
is currently involved inseveral research projects including a multisite study of young persons' socialization experiences into gun cultures and consequential conflict resolution preferences. Dr. Downing is also using mixed qualitative methods to study motivations for high-priced software piracy among industry professionals, including artists and other graphic designers. Other current and forthcoming projects include an examination of street violence motivations, a qualitative analysis of virtual victimization experiences and perceptions, and a number of other initiatives aimed at further exploring the relationship between culture, social control and crime.
Dr. Molly Dragiewicz's
ongoing projects include research on the experiences of abused mothers in the family court system; a study of service providers' experiences of the backlash against laws and services targeting woman abuse in the United States;"equal protection" lawsuits against battered women's shelters; and framing in news articles about woman abuse. Dr. Dragiewicz
has recently published: "Teaching about Human Trafficking: Opportunities and Challenges for Critical Engagement".
FeministTeacher 18.3 (2008): 185-201; "Patriarchy Reasserted: Fathers' Rights and Anti-VAWA Activism."
Feminist Criminology 3.2 (2008): 121-144; and "Understanding the Complexities of Feminist Perspectives on Woman Abuse: A Commentary on Donald G. Dutton's
Rethinking Domestic Violence," co-Authored with Walter S. DeKeseredy.
Violence Against Women 13.8(2007): 874-884. Dr. Dragiewicz is currently working on a book about legal efforts to undermine anti-violence policies and services in the context of neoliberalism. She is also conducting a new study on the ways that support for, and resistance to, anti-violence work have changed over time.
Dr. Shanti Fernando
has published the book
Race and the City which studied the political and community mobilizing of Chinese Canadians and Chinese Americans in
Toronto and
Los Angeles. This spoke to broader issues of justice and equity as it affects racialized communities. She has also written in the areas of regional differences in
Canada and the importance of clear ethical guidelines in public service. Currently Dr. Fernando is conducting research in the area of diversity policy in
Canada and the
US as well as labour policy, and immigration and settlement policy in
Ontario. All of this revolves around Dr. Fernando's primary concern which is the creation of strong communities and working towards greater systemic equity and social cohesion. These are both vital elements of a healthy and vibrant society.
Dr. Judith Grant's
research interests include drugs and gender,
women and addiction/recovery, violence against women, public policy issues, criminology, and qualitative research methods. Dr. Grant is currently involved in two projects:
research partner with the
CELHIN network working on the qualitative aspect of the Research Project:
Assessment of Addiction Problems and Service Needs for the Central East Local Health IntegrationNetwork (CELHIN); and an analysis of 25 men's stories of addiction and recovery from the Ozark region of the United States (using qualitative methodology).
Dr. Ronald Hinch's
primary research interests are in the policing of violent crime.
He has published on the policing of Canadian sexual assault laws and the policing of domestic assault.
Dr. Hinch's current research is focused on two projects.
The first project is a book on the food industry. This book focuses on how the food industry grows, raises, processes, and markets food. It deals with issues of food safety as well as labour issues in food production, as well as the role of governments in the regulation of the food industry. His second project is a book on Canadian serial killers. It provides an assessment of the known Canadian serial killers in Canada assessing their social situations, biographies and actions and offers a theoretical model to explaining why serial murderers do what they do.
Dr. Alyson King's current research projectis on how children, adolescents and young adults read and understand non-fiction graphic novels/texts. Another project focuses on the how children learn and play in on-line virtual worlds. Other research interests include the history of women and higher education, the role of science, technology and education in creating a modern Canada, and the history of educationaltechnologies.
Dr. Ganaele Langlois' research focuses on critically assessing the new practices of online communication that have emerged with the rise of online social networking (Facebook, MySpace) and user-generated content websites (Youtube, Flickr,Wikipedia, etc.). Her research examines the role of software as a cultural actor capable of producing relevant content and interpreting users' culturalpreferences, and its impact with regards to understanding the new politics of communication online. As associate director of the Infoscape Research Lab, Dr.Langlois works on developing the methodologies and tools to examine online political activity on Web 2.0 platforms.
Current research in which
Dr. Sharon Lauricella (Loverock) is engaged includes astudy of how students in both the k-12 system and in university gain and use information literacy skills. This study analyzes how students at different levels feel "lucky" with Google, and how students learn to use more credible academic sources in research and writing. Additional pedagogical research, in partnership with Dr. Robin Kay, focuses on the student experience with using laptops in learning. Dr. Lauricella's passion for yoga inspireda study of yoga nidra and self-calming techniques with university students. This work considers the effectiveness of in-person versus digital delivery of self-talk. The research area of greatest interest is that of prayer as a means of communication. Within this area, Sharon is engaged in a project, together with Jim Baesler at Old Dominion University, on an analysis of how the media affects public and private prayer processes, and how prayer influences spiritual and personal health.
Dr. Amy Leach
is primarily interested in issues related to deception detection and young witnesses. Professor Leach's recent lie detection projects have focused on second-language deception, the reliability of performance and ways to improve lie detection. Dr. Leach's previous work with child witnesses has centered on children's deception and the effects of different interviewing procedures. In addition, Dr. Leach is engaged in on-going collaborations with colleagues. For example, she has been working with Dr. Clow at UOIT to examine the stigma associated with being wrongfully convicted. Also, in conjunction with researchers at several other universities, she is examining the effects of viewing conditions, bias, and lineup size on eyewitness identifications.
Dr. Patrik Olsson
has since the 1990s conducted comparative research on discriminatory practices against children at risk in South East Asia, South America, Africa and Europe. Dr. Olsson's research has predominantly focused on children in conflict with the law and the socio-legal conditions surrounding this vulnerable group. Furthermore, he is involved in research concerning critical perspectives on Information Technology and has recently published this article
Law and Cyber Society: Socio-legal perspectives on the Internet, which discusses the culture of the Internet and the legal predicaments that have arisen lately due to problems that involve various jurisdictions and legal cultures
(using qualitative and quantitative methodologies).
Dr. Mari Peepre's most recent area of scholarly research has been the effect of migration, ethnicity and the diaspora experience upon cultural production.
She was co-chair of the Helsinki Project "Cross-CulturalContacts:
Diaspora Writing in English
and she has lectured widely around Europe and Canada. She has been the author, co-author or editor of eight books (3 academic, 5 textbooks) and she has published 25 articles and book chapters. Books include
Hugh MacLennan's National Trilogy: Mapping a Canadian Identity (1940-1950),
Transcultural Travels: Essays in Canadian Literature and Society, and
Reading Our World:
A Guide to Practical and Theoretical Criticism.
Dr. Barbara Perry continues to work in the area of hate crime, and has begun to make contributions to the limited scholarship on hate crime in Canada. Here, she is particularly interested in anti-Muslim violence, and hate crime against Aboriginal people.
Dr. Teresa Pierce's scholarship and research focus on the implications of digital technology andthe ways in which people negotiate their cultural identities in order to resolve complex situations when online. The central theme of her research is the production of meaning in every day life. Current projects include research on online support groups for victims of cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking, transdisciplinary research on the interconnectedness of gender, culture, and computer science with user-produced semantic messages in digital formats, and the role of the cyberconduit in global politics.
Dr. Mojgan Rahbari
is a specialist in international migration and integration, policy studies, multiculturalism, race and ethnic studies, and identity and citizenship studies. She also has research interests in domestic and comparative immigration and refugee law, socio-cultural aspects of migrant integration, globalization, and citizenship policy.
Dr. Hannah Scott
during 2006-2007, was the sole administrator and co-principal investigator on a study examining homelessness in Durham Region (with Dr.
Wendy Stanyon and Dr.
Shahid Alvi), conducting two censuses and carrying out 64 qualitative interviews on the homelessness experience. She is currently working on creating an instructional film series for the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 16.0 and writing a victimology text with Oxford University Press
; working to establish a centre for evaluation and survey research at UOIT (with Dr.
Nawal Ammar); working on the analysis of the qualitative data generated from the Homelessness Initiative
; and running an evaluation of the Durham Regional Drug Treatment Court. More recently she has developed an interest invictims of fraud, e-crime, and organized crime.
Dr. Phillip Shon's research activities can be broadly classified into two
categories, police and parricide studies. These two areas and the theoretical
position I hold is directly related to the methodological approach I assume, as
well as my background in a liberal arts education. My first research agenda
examines the role of language in police-citizen encounters. That is, my work
examines police behavior by analyzing how the police talk to the public. My
second research activity involves an archival examination of parricide in
nineteenth-century America, and parricide offenders' behavior using
contemporary methods of behavioral analysis. For future research projects, I would like to
explore parricides in Korea, Japan, and China.
Dr. Diane Sivasubramaniam
has a number of ongoing research projects in the area of Psychology and Law. Her research focuses on how people think about justice in the legal system, and particularly in restorative justice procedures. Restorative justice is an approach to wrongdoing that emphasises healing the wounds of victims, offenders and communities caused by crime, rather than focusing on punishing an offender. Restorative justice procedures are emerging rapidly in legal systems worldwide, as an alternative to traditional court procedures, but very little is known about the psychological mechanisms underpinning people's responses to them. Dr.Sivasubramaniam's work focuses on how people behave in and respond to these procedures.
Dr. Sivasubramaniam and her collaborators are also interested in authority-subordinate differences injustice reasoning. Recent research has highlighted some important differences in the way that decision makers (e.g. judges, police) and decision recipients(e.g. disputants, citizens) think about justice. The current program of research explores the conditions under which this disparity between authorities and subordinates occurs, and the reasons for its existence. This line of research has interesting implications for authority-subordinate relations in the legal system, as well as in other arenas.
Dr. Sivasubramaniam supervises student research projects, and works with students in a Psychologyand Law research lab.
Dr. Andrea Slane's
research projects primarily deal with law's encounter with and management of new communications technologies, especially the Internet. She examines the law's response to technology both substantively and formally. She places that response within the broader context of non-legal texts that address social problems raised by these technologies, or that use popular understandings of legal terms to talk about these problems. She is currently working on three projects: 1) privacy and photography; 2) online safety strategies aimed at children and youth; and 3) the tensions between intellectual property regimes (especially trade-mark and copyright). She is also a member of an Ontario-wide team working on an interdisciplinary project aiming to determine the developmental and contextual risk and protective factors contributing to online victimization of and offending by children and youth.
Dr. Arshia U. Zaidi, whose area of research is race/ethnicity, immigration, family, gender, and sexuality, is currently involved in a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) project over the next two years which qualitatively examines cultural dilemmas and sexual experiences of young South Asians in the Greater Toronto Area. Moreover, she engages in quantitative research.
