Dr. William Hébert and Dr. Michael Christensen are two recipients of this year’s SSHRC Insight Development Grants. These grants support research in its early stages, enabling “the development of new research questions, as well as experimentation with new methods, theoretical approaches and/or ideas.”

Learn more about their research below.

William Hébert, Assistant Professor, Department of Law and Legal Studies

Entitled “A Critical Analysis of Emerging Policy Solutions to the `Problem’ of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in Canada’s Criminal Justice System,” this project looks at Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and how it has emerged and materialized as a criminal justice problem in Canada. ($54,776).

Michael Christensen, Assistant Professor, Department of Law and Legal Studies

Entitled “A Cultural Typology of Vaccine Misinformation,” this research project will develop a new way to understand and address misinformation surrounding measures to control COVID-19. Christensen is working with co-applicants Sarah Everts from the School of Journalism and Communication and Majid Komeili from Computer Science. ($70,790).

You can learn more about these grants here: 2021 SSHRC Insight Development Grants.

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Law and Legal Studies Research Spotlight

The Department of Law and Legal Studies’ Research Spotlight Series highlights our faculty members’ innovative research grants and projects.

In this inaugural post, we feature the research of Dale Spencer, Associate Professor, Department of Law and Legal Studies, �Ӱ�ԭ�� University. Dr. Spencer’s research on violence, victimization, the 60s scoop’ and settler colonial projects, and digital worlds and the young people who engage with them, is both innovative and responsive to the important and often under examined aspects of our history, daily life, and future possibilities.

A Researcher on the Rise

Dale Spencer joined the Department in 2014 and is Associate Professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies. Spencer’s work is empirically grounded and theoretically rich and contributes to understandings of violence and victimization across numerous contexts.

As a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, Spencer researched sexual victimization, including responses by non-governmental agencies and police. Since then, his focus has expanded beyond criminological concerns to include important contributions to social theory, qualitative methods, and explorations of violence and victimization in different contexts, including corrections, elderly care, forced adoption, and sport.

Spencer has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles including in journals such as the British Journal of Criminology, Body and Society, Theoretical Criminology, Punishment and Society, Journal of Youth Studies, and Ethnography. Spencer was awarded the Ontario Early Researcher Award (2017, $150,000), the Faculty of Public Affairs Research Excellence award (2019, $15,000), and the �Ӱ�ԭ�� Faculty Graduate Mentoring Award (2020).

Strongly committed to mentoring, supervising, and publishing with graduate students, Spencer has six ongoing funded projects including:

Policing Sex Crimes

This Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funded project explores police investigator attitudes and interpretations of sex crime survivors and the complex bureaucratic infrastructure that has formed in response to sex crime victims.

Spencer’s forthcoming book entitled Policing Sex Crimes (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022) offers an overview of the affordances and difficulties of investigating and responding to sex crimes in contemporary digital society. With co-authors Rose Ricciardelli (Memorial University) and Department of Law and Legal Studies PhD graduate Alexa Dodge (Dalhousie University), he elucidates how victims are interpreted by police officers and the challenges they face achieving justice in the wake of sexual victimization. Policing Sex Crimes also probes thornier issues regarding sex crime investigations, such as how police investigators’ experiences of watching cases flounder in court can lead to a cynicism that impacts their judgement of the viability of sexual assault cases.

Pekiwewin, Coming Home (aka the 60s Scoop project)

Spencer is a co-investigator (with principal investigator Raven Sinclair, University of Regina) on the SSHRC funded Pekiwewin project, which examines the period between 1950 and 1985, now referred to as the “60s scoop”, during which no less than 20,000 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes across Canada as a part of a broader settler colonial project.

This study consists of two subprojects, archival/document research and a qualitative matrix, designed to unearth the architecture of the Indigenous Welfare era and reveal the nature of how obscure and questionable policies were reified, and subsequently inscribed, into the culture and practice of Indigenous Child Welfare.

Digital Worlds and Young People

Funded through his Ontario Early Researcher Award, this project seeks to fill knowledge gaps both within Canada and beyond regarding youth and the impact of the digital worlds with which they engage.

This mixed methods research project is committed to listening to the viewpoints and perspectives of young people and using those perspectives to analyze how digital worlds foster and aid in youth’s development of their identities and senses of belonging, as well as their experiences of loneliness and friendship online.  Alongside Department of Law and Legal Studies PhD student Jean Ketterling and Department of Law and Legal Studies PhD graduate, Daniella Bendo (King’s UW), Spencer is writing a book manuscript on youth experiences of digital artifacts and the plethora of online platforms that they utilize.

More about Dale Spencer

You can find out more about Dr. Dale Spencer’s research, publications and more on his Faculty Profile page.

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Professor Sebastien Malette has focused on unrecognized Métis and non-status Indigenous communities in the Eastern provinces of Canada. He is the co-author of three books on the subject, including his latest, entitled Bois-Brulés: The untold story of the Métis of Western Québec (UBC, 2020).

His latest project, funded by a $203,999 SSHRC Insight Grant, is entitled “Métis Acadians? An investigation into the legal arguments of the Kouchibouguac families against her Majesty the Queen.” It considers how one hundred Acadian Métis families who were expropriated when Kouchibouguac Park was created are now deploying a new legal strategy. They are demanding compensation from Canada under an alleged ancestral title under the protection of Hereditary Mi’kmaq chief Stephen Augustine.

“This innovative argument allows us to move beyond accusations that the Eastern Métis would necessarily pose an existential threat to Indigenous sovereignties,” explains Malette. “Rather, by accommodating those Acadian Métis willing to adhere to and assume their responsibilities vis-à-vis Indigenous laws and institutions to ensure their recognition as championed by Chief Augustine, the Acadian Métis diaspora could very well be in a position to side-step the Canadian legal mechanism of recognition derived by section 35 altogether in favour of Indigenous legal norms. In such a radical anti-colonial scenario, the Acadian Métis would thus reinforce existing Mi’kmaq political and legal institutions rather than competing against them.”

In collaboration with anthropologists, Drs. Michel Bouchard (UNBC), Siomonn Pulla (Royal Roads University) and Denis Gagnon (University of Saint-Boniface), this project will explore the historical and ethnographic evidence associated with the Acadian Métis diaspora, as well as the legal implications associated with this novel argument articulated by the families of Kouchibouguac.

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Congratulations to Prof. Doris Buss and Prof. Blair Rutherford (Department of Sociology and Anthropology) who have won a �Ӱ�ԭ�� University COVID-19 Rapid Research Response Grant.

In response to COVID-19, �Ӱ�ԭ�� developed an internal funding opportunity to provide seed funding for original, innovative, and time-sensitive research to propose solutions to the challenges posed by this pandemic.

Attending (to) Class: Intersectional Study of COVID-19 Adaptation in Universities in Canada and Africa, will focus on one university in each of Canada, Kenya, and Sierra Leone. With universities across the globe rapidly moving their curriculums online, this pilot study examines the gendered, socio-economic, racialized, and rural/urban contexts that shape access and participation in distance education for women and men students. The project will also look at access and use of the technology (phones, computers, internet) needed for distance education, and the differences in class, race, and rural/urban locations, alongside other obligations, including caring roles, that women and men students navigate when undertaking their studies. The research team, including Professors Aisha Ibrahim (University of Sierra Leone), Sarah Kinyanjui (University of Nairobi), and student researchers from each university, will conduct interviews and focus group discussions with students and university administrators at each institution. The resulting data on intersecting inequalities and student access to distance learning will inform ongoing COVID-19 responses.

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Meeting the Challenges of Gladue: An Inquiry into the Use of Social Context Information in Judicial Determination of Sentences for Indigenous Offenders in Canada”

In 1999, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld changes to the Canadian Criminal Code that were intended to reduce the over-incarceration of Indigenous people in Canadian prisons.

Known as the “Gladue requirements” after the case R v. Gladue, they required courts to consider “the unique background and circumstances of Aboriginal people” in sentencing. But the requirements have been criticized as ineffective, as the number of Indigenous people behind bars has continued to rise.

“Today, the number of Indigenous people in federal prison is roughly five-times their population in Canada generally,” wrote Professor Dickson in a description of her project. “One in every three federally-sentenced woman is Indigenous…and 41% of all youth in custody admissions are Indigenous.”

Professor Dickson won a SSHRC Insight Grant worth $185,823 for a project that will address the lack of research into whether the Gladue requirements reduced sentencing disparities and Indigenous over-incarceration.

“There is little Canadian or international research supporting this assumption,” wrote Dr. Dickson. She and her co-applicant, Law and Legal Studies Professor Sebastian Malette will ask how the Gladue requirements actually influence judicial decisions, and how the requirements are supported across Canada.

“The findings of this project promise to empower the scholarly, policy and Indigenous communities with greater understanding of the role and the impact of Gladue,” she explains

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Congratulations to Prof. Rebecca Bromwich, whose book  (Demeter Press, 2015) has been selected as the Women’s and Gender Studies Association (WGSRF) Outstanding Scholarship Prize honorable mention!

The book originated as Prof. Bromwich’s PhD thesis, and was later published and awarded a Canadian Law and Society Association (CLSA) student essay prize. This honour from the WGSRF is a reflection of the interdisciplinary work produced by the department, with particular recognition of excellence in Prof. Bromwich’s book within the disciplines of sociolegal studies, law, and women’s and gender studies.

�Ӱ�ԭ�� the Book

The 2007 death by self-induced strangulation in prison of nineteen year old inmate Ashley Smith drew a great deal of public attention. The case gave rise to a shocking verdict of homicide in the 2013 inquest into the cause of her death. In this book, I inquire into questions about of what social problem or phenomenon Ashley Smith is a “case,” and what governmental work is done by prevalent constructions of her as an exemplar. This book performs a critical discourse analysis of figures of Ashley Smith that emerge in her case, looking at those representations as technologies of governance. It argues that the Smith case is read most accurately not as an isolated system failure but an extreme result of routine, everyday brutality, of a society and bureaucracies’ gradual necropolitical successes. It critically analyzes how representations of Ashley in the case leave intact, and even reinforce, logics and systems governing gender, motherhood, security, risk, race thinking and exclusion, in power and knowledge that make it predictable for similar deaths in prison to recur. It argues that, in the logics underlying constructions through which Ashley Smith was celebritized and sacralized, mothers’, girls’ and women’s subjectivities and agencies are made unknowable and even unthinkable while the racialized social boundaries of a white settler society are maintained. This book attempts to intervene in those logics to help make alternative outcomes possible and to take steps towards questioning the raced, classed and heteronormative boundaries of commonly assumed figures of the “noble victim”, “good girl” and “good mother” while supporting the agencies of adolescent girls in actively playing a part in the authoring of their lives.

�Ӱ�ԭ�� the WGSRF Outstanding Scholarship Prize

In 2002 the (then) CWSA/ACÉF introduced , awarded to a monograph published in the previous year, in either English or French, as selected by a committee of 3-5 members. In the years since implementing this award, between 8-18 books have been nominated each year. Nominations are solicited from both association members and from publishers. Award winners originally received a complimentary registration to the conference, a plaque, and a year’s subscription to Atlantis at the awards ceremony during the annual conference. Up to $1000.00 was available to defray travel expenses.

Learn more about our Faculty Publications!

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Congratulations to Prof. Dale Spencer, who was recently been named by the Ontario government as one of three recipients at �Ӱ�ԭ�� University to be honoured with  (ERA). Each researcher will receive $150,000 to support projects on electric vehicles, cybercrime and youth, and skilled migration.

“Digital Culture, Youth and Policing: Risk-taking and Police Response in the Information Age”

Prof. Spencer’s research program explores how young people understand and mitigate cyber risks, more specifically forms of violence associated with the use of digital communication. In line with the Ontario Innovation Agenda in the area of digital media and information technology, his research will investigate youth experiences of cybercrime and interactions with police. Spencer will also examine the experiences of Ontario police officers when policing youth and responding to youth-related crimes associated with digital communication.

�Ӱ�ԭ�� the Early Research Awards

The program (ERA) is a program administered by the Province of Ontario that aims to help promising, recently-appointed Ontario researchers build their research teams of graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and research associates. It replaced the Premier’s Research Excellence Awards (PREA) program in 2005.

The ultimate goal of the program is to improve Ontario’s ability to attract and retain the best and brightest research talent in high-priority economic areas. Recipients receive $100,000 from the Province of Ontario towards a total project of $190,000.

For more information, please read the full university press release .

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Critical Criminology / Representing Justice
A Joint Conference of the Critical Perspectives: Criminology and Social Justice and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Justice Studies
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University of Ottawa, May 4‐5 2017
Unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin Territory
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Call for Contributions
Proposals for papers and panels for the annual, national critical criminology conference to be held at University of Ottawa on May 4 and 5, 2017. With keynote speakers Michelle Brown (University of Tennessee) and Didier Fassin (Princeton University), the conference will be an opportunity to engage in stimulating discussions on criminological and social justice issues between critical scholars and community stakeholders.

>> For full details, please view the .

Participants are asked to forward proposals and questions by email to: critcrm@uottawa.ca
The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2017.

Conference Convenors
�Ӱ�ԭ�� University, Department of Law and Legal Studies
�Ӱ�ԭ�� University, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
�Ӱ�ԭ�� University, Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice
University of Ottawa, Department of Criminology
University of Winnipeg, Centre for Interdisciplinary Justice Studies (CIJS)
University of Winnipeg, Department of Criminal Justice

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Caglar Dolek is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Department of Law and Legal Studies in �Ӱ�ԭ�� University to undertake research for his doctoral dissertation under the guidance of Professor for a period of ten months. His PhD research is concerned with the historical formation of the police organization as a constitutive, albeit contested, facet of the social marginalization of the urban poor in Turkey. His broader research interests include the critique of political economy, state theory and the historical anthropology of the state, law and policing.

Dolek will be presenting at the upcoming Departmental Colloquium. His paper is entitled “Historical Formation of the Police in the Processes of Social Marginalization: The Case of Altındağ-Ankara, Turkey“.

His PhD research project problematizes dialectical articulation of police formation with social marginalization of the urban poor in Turkey. This research is based on extensive multi-method fieldwork conducted in Altındağ district, which is a region historically known for its shantytowns “harbouring the dangerous classes” or being “the place of danger, drugs and crime” in Ankara, the capital city of the country. Employing historical-anthropological methodology to the study of formations of police and social marginality, Dolek intends to make sense of the three central dynamics of bourgeois police project in Turkey: i) struggles over urban space, ii) struggles over the forms of labouring, and iii) struggles over publicness of organization of security itself. On the basis of the systematic analysis of the fieldwork, it will be contended that these three distinct, but dialectically articulated, forms of struggle historically condition the class character as well as institutionally materialized form of bourgeois police, which in turn has a constitutive presence in the socio-spatial marginalization of the urban poor in Ankara, Turkey.

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In the ‘2015 – 2016 Research and International Year in Review’, a publication released by the Office of the Vice-President (Research and International) this week, a section has been designated to spotlight research and funding highlights within the university. Prof. Dale Spencer is among those featured, and discusses his research projects in an article entitled, “Violence and Victimization: Police, Homelessness, Online Abuse and Indigenous Adoption”. As noted in the article, Prof. Spencer’s work delves into the experiences, effects of, and reactions to, manifold forms of violence and victimization.

To read the article and view the full document, please visit: 

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