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?