Graduate Students

Md Nazmul Arefin

Supervisor: Dr. Temitope Oriola

Md Nazmul Arefin is a PhD candidate and Killam Scholar, Centre for Criminological Research, Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is a Research Fellow at the Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies (CIFRS). His research interests include terrorism and radicalization studies, policing, social justice, Islamophobia, and narrative criminology. He is working as a Research Assistant on a National Dorothy Killam Fellowship project, one of only eight awarded in Canada in 2023. His writings appear in leading scholarly journals, such as Policing (Oxford University Press), International Criminology, British Journal of Criminology, Critical Studies on Terrorism, African Security, etc.

Celine Beaulieu

Supervisor: Dr. Kevin Haggerty

Celine Beaulieu is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Centre for Criminological Research at the University of Alberta. She completed her MA in Sociology at the University of Alberta and her BA (Honours) in Sociology at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research interests broadly focus on policing, homelessness, prisons, reintegration, and rural criminology. Her MA thesis explored local police officers’ experiences with Edmonton’s unhoused population, identifying key frustrations officers experienced and how they learned to be ‘fair in unfair circumstances’ through local collaborative strategies to manage the city’s homelessness crisis. For her dissertation research, Celine will conduct mini-ethnographies and qualitative interviews in rural communities to understand how RCMP officers work with homeless populations, encampments, drug use, overdoses and gang activity.

Erin Embury

Erin Embury is an undergraduate student in the Department of Sociology, majoring in Criminology. Her research interests broadly include drug treatment in carceral and community settings, harm reduction within policing, and reintegration. With support from the Roger S. Smith Undergraduate Researcher Award, her prior research used mixed methods to examine formerly incarcerated women’s access to substance misuse treatment after release.

Bilguundari Enkhtugs

Research Interests: digital criminology, online justice, cyber-victimization; community supervision, probation, and punishment

Emily R. Gerbrandt

Emily R. Gerbrandt (She/They) is an anti-violence activist, Survivor, and Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology. Their research engages intersectional feminist theory and anti-carceral perspectives to explore the connections between gendered violence, punishment, and the state. Her research has also explored the #MeToo Movement and the role of digital feminist activism in the creation of extra-legal justice mechanisms by sexualized violence Survivors. Her dissertation, “Surviving the Shadow Pandemic” explores the connections between pandemics and gendered violence, and investigates how COVID-19 management policies on university campuses can exacerbate institutional conditions that give rise to sexualized and gendered violence as well as disadvantage students-Survivors seeking sexual education, resources, justice, and support. Their co-authored work on violence amongst other adults in residential care facilities has been published in the Journal of Gerontological Social Work (2019), and the Canadian Review of Sociology (2022).

Lorielle Giffin

Lorielle Giffin is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. She obtained her BA in Criminology and her MA in Criminology and Social Justice from Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). She has experience conducting research with incarcerated people, the loved ones of incarcerated people, and arrested individuals within 24 hours of their arrest. Her research interests are in the areas of crimmigration, prison and imprisonment, substance use and drug policy, and harm reduction. Using both ethnography and qualitative interviews, her dissertation will explore perceptions and experiences of harm reduction in two Canadian cities (Halifax and Edmonton) from the perspective of various stakeholders.

Supervisor: Dr. Sandra Bucerius

Katherine Hancock

Katherine Hancock is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. She obtained her HBSc in Psychology and Criminology and her MA in Criminology from the University of Toronto. Katherine has experience using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Her doctoral research considers the cultural structures of the police by examining the perspectives and experiences of the civilian and sworn membership of a police service during a period of unsettlement, driven by (perceived?) heightened public scrutiny, a global pandemic, and changes in leadership. In part, this work explores how cultural factors impact the manner in which police service members interpret their roles and identity, and, potentially, how cultural factors relate to individual and group behaviour within the institution of policing. Katherine currently works in research and development with a police service and is a former criminal intelligence analyst.

Research interests: policing, institutional complexity, culture, immigration, citizenship, victimization

John Haney

Supervisor: Dr. Kevin Haggerty

John Haney is a PhD student specializing in the sociology of policing. He holds a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Arts in Criminal Justice. His research examines police culture, the legitimacy of policing institutions, the economics of policing, and the effectiveness of internal and civilian oversight mechanisms in addressing systemic harms to marginalized populations. His work focuses on how institutional accountability shapes justice and public trust.

Samantha Knapp

Supervisor: Dr. Jana Grekul

Samantha is a MA student in the Department of Sociology. She obtained her BA in Criminology from the University of Alberta. Samantha's research focuses on prison programming, drug treatment, and correctional policies. Her thesis examines correctional officers and incarcerated individuals' perceptions of Therapeutic Living Units (TLUs) in Alberta provincial prisons.

Ashley Kohl

Twitter: @admkohl
Research Gate

Ashley Kohl is a PhD candidate and Joseph-Armand Bombardier scholar in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. Her research interests include environmental sociology, social movements, critical criminology, and prisons. Ashley is a senior researcher and the head quantitative research analyst for the University of Alberta Prison Project. Her MA thesis examined how protective custody classification affects how incarcerated men relate to each other and negotiate their own sense of identity within the larger inmate hierarchy. She is currently working on her dissertation examining environmental politics in Alberta.

Natasha Martino

Natasha Martino is a PhD candidate in the department of Sociology at McMaster University. She completed her MA in Criminology at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her primary research interests include urban poverty, homelessness, governance, and policing. She is also interested in the criminal justice system, reintegration, and community safety. Natasha's dissertation research uses immersive ethnographic methods to examine everyday life under conditions of homelessness and urban poverty. Through sustained engagement with people experiencing homelessness and community actors, she explores how social order, care, and belonging are produced and regulated in public space, and how people navigate governance systems in contexts of scarcity and marginalization.

Alysha McDonald

My research focuses on the carceral and reintegrative experiences of people convicted of sexual offences in Canada. I examine the lived experiences of people convicted of sexual offences as they transition from prison to the free world to understand how they negotiate and manage reintegrative tasks and perceptions of self with the added barriers of the sex offender label. Through this lens, I explore how reintegration may be understood as a continuum of incarceration and integrated into discourses of prisons, punishment, and identity.

Research interests: incarceration, reintegration, punishment, identity, the carceral continuum

Rebekah McNeilly

Supervisors: Dr. Sandra Bucerius & Dr. Luca Berardi"

Research Interests: My dissertation work focuses on the experiences of youth straddling the foster care and youth justice systems. I inquire into their self-described experiences of victimization, day-to-day life, and places of respite. Additionally, I am a research assistant on the University of Alberta Prison Project looking at the experiences of incarceration in Canadian prisons, post-prison re-entry and re-entry programs. I also work with various not-for-profits including the Salvation Army inquiring into recidivism among their post-incarceration service users."

Maddy Rousseau

Supervisor: Dr. Bryan Hogeveen

Maddy is a master’s student in the Department of Sociology and holds a BA in Sociology from MacEwan University. Her research interests broadly include the sociology of media, populism, family, and youth justice. Her master’s thesis employs qualitative analysis of social media content produced by a far-right active club to examine how ideological messaging, masculine identities, and forms of collective belonging are constructed in digital spaces.

Ivan Shmatko

Ivan Shmatko is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology, University of Alberta. His PhD project investigates changes that happened in order accomplishment practices in the Ukrainian Armed Forces after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing mass mobilization. His previous research focused on the Ukrainian police, exploring their imaginary work, which led to a publication in the British Journal of Criminology (Shmatko 2022). He is also a co-founder of the Ukrainian Centre for Law and Crime Research. As part of the team of scholars from the Centre, Shmatko has been involved in numerous research projects on security, law, and crime in Ukraine. Shmatko is currently involved in a qualitative project he started with his colleagues from the centre on Ukrainian judges called “Ukrainian judge: Vocation, Profession, Daily Life”.

Emily Stewart

Supervisor: Dr. Sandra Bucerius

Emily Stewart is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. She received her MA in Sociology from Queen’s University, where her research examined how individuals on bail experience judicial supervision and release conditions. More broadly, her research interests center on the pretrial process and prison experience, including how people navigate court, custody, and release, as well as gang-related dynamics within carceral settings. She is a lead researcher with the University of Alberta Prison Project and an Associate Editor with the John Howard Society of Canada blog where she leads, Within the System, a research-based series drawing on fieldwork from the University of Alberta Prison Project.

Leanne Stevens

Supervisors: Dr. Sandra Bucerius & Dr. Phil Badawy

Leanne is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology. She obtained her BA in Sociology from MacEwan University and her MA in Sociology from the University of Alberta. Leanne's master's thesis analyzed correctional staff and incarcerated women's perspectives on the Prison Needle Exchange Program, a harm reduction program implemented in select Canadian federal prisons. Leanne's research interests broadly include correctional officer (CO) and prison subculture, CO mental health, and anti-terrorism law and policy. Her work appears in Incarceration: An international journal of imprisonment, detention, and coercive confinement and the Journal of Criminal Justice.

Regev Stilman

Regev (Reg) is an undergraduate student in the Department of Psychology and Sociology. Following his Bachelor's, he is hoping to complete an MA and a PhD. His research interests include the organizational structure of gangs within and outside of prisons, capital punishment, and homicide.

Manzah-Kyentoh Yankey