Speakers

From Linguistics to Labour Studies and from Economics to Women’s and Gender Studies, each presentation explores the topic of crime and aggression through a unique lens.

Gary Libben

Department Chair – Applied Linguistics

Presentation: Your Language: It Says a Lot About What is in and on Your Mind

In many ways, language is a double-edged sword: It creates bonds among people, but it can also be a means of aggression. Linguistic aggression is very powerful because of the way that language is processed in the human mind. I will discuss how applied linguistics can help us to understand how we are affected by verbal threat and verbal aggression.

Voula Marinos

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR – CHILD & YOUTH STUDIES

Presentation: Key Issues in Youth Crime & the Youth Justice System in Canada

Almost everybody engages in some sort of criminal behaviour during their teenage years. So why are some groups of adolescents over-represented in the criminal justice system? To understand, it helps to look at youth crime separately from how the system responds to it.

Scott Henderson

associate professor – Communication, Popular Culture & FILM

Presentation: Life. Sentence. Prisons as Media.

Media are everywhere. Our lives are constantly being mediated and these media forms can reveal a lot to us about culture and society. I will discuss broader issues related to media, communication and culture by considering how prisons can mediate people via reform or punishment.

Cornelius Christian

ASSISTANT professor – economics

Presentation: How Violent Gangs Recruit New Members

Imagine that you are the boss of a violent gang, and need to recruit new members – how would you go about it? We will use insights from economics to answer this question, with references to the Sicilian mafia, MS-13, Mexican drug cartels and Aryan Brotherhood.

Michael Ripmeester

professor – GEOGRAPHY & TOURISM

Presentation: The Right to Bear Arms: Regions, Culture and Gun Ownership

The ideas of culture and cultural geography will be introduced as well as an explanation of how everyday cultural practices are hard to shift. American gun culture will be used as an example.

Simon Black

ASSISTANT professor – LABOUR STUDIES

Presentation: Kill a Worker, Go to Jail? Corporate Crime and Worker Safety

In Canada, when a worker dies on the job, the company they work for can be held criminally responsible for their death. In 2013, 1,134 garment workers died in the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh while making clothes for Canadian companies. Who is responsible for the death of these workers?

Tim Heinmiller

GRADUATE PROGRAM DIRECTOR & ASSOCIATE professor – POLITICAL SCIENCE

Presentation: Why Doesn’t the Government Do Something? Mass Shooting and the Politics of Gun Control.

Looking at mass shooting events and how governments respond to them, either by introducing gun control measures or not. Featuring both Canadian and American examples.

Andrew Dane

ASSOCIATE professor – PSYCHOLOGY

Presentation: The Evolution of Bullying

Research suggests that some adolescents benefit from bullying, as they are popular, powerful and have more boyfriends or girlfriends than other students. I will discuss these findings from an evolutionary perspective, and explain how this information may help us to develop more effective programs for reducing bullying and peer victimization.

Hijin Park

ASSOCIATE professor – SOCIOLOGY

Presentation: A Sociological Analysis of Crime and Aggression

An explanation of how individual acts of violence need to be understood within their social and historical contexts, drawing on real-world examples. Two graduating students will join this session to explain the difference that sociological thinking has made for them.

Robyn Bourgeois

ASSISTANT professor – wOMEN’S & GENDER STUDIES

Presentation: Gendering Violence

  • Why are perpetrators of violence predominantly male while victims of this violence are predominantly female?
  • Why do we treat violent women differently from men who commit violence?