I am a Professor at the Munk
School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and the
Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto, where I
am Distinguished Professor of Global Justice, and am
cross-appointed to Law, Political Science, and Jewish Studies.
I work at the intersection of
politics, culture, and social science approaches to law and justice. I
study hopes, claims, ideas, and competitions about legality
and justice, generally (though not always) during turbulent,
disrupted, violent, or miserable times.
I also direct the Global
Justice Lab in the Munk School, in which we work with justice
systems under stress worldwide, as well as the Lab for the
Global Study of Antisemitism in the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for
Jewish Studies.
I am actively working on four
projects: (1) a comparative historical study of reactions to
police violence during the 1950s-1960s; (2) research with
recently arrested individuals and families, on their experiences and hopes
for police reform; (3) expertise, morality, and bureaucracy in
the field of international human rights; and (4) antisemitism and anti-antisemitism. I also continue to
work on earlier projects focusing on international criminal
law and wartime atrocities, and on approaches to law,
crime, and safety during times of political disruption.
Over the past several years, I
have taught courses on events and turbulent times; antisemitism: law, policy, and measurement; law, culture, and the social imagination; justice institutions in Europe; police violence in global affairs; the sociology of
atrocities; law, politics and globalization; justice
measurement; and the sociology of law.
I have served in a variety of
academic leadership positions at the University of Toronto.
This includes serving as Associate Director, Academic for the
Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, currently the Senior Advisor for the Undergraduate Curriculum, and have directed undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs at UofT. I
currently am a faculty representative on Governing Council at
the University of Toronto, Vice-Chair of the University Affairs Board, and among other roles have been
Vice-Chair of the Planning and Budget Committee.
Beyond the University of
Toronto, I am a Permanent Visiting Professor at the University
of Copenhagen, and a faculty affiliate with the Weatherhead
Research Cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion at
Harvard University. I recently served as Chair of the Sociology of
Law section of the American Sociological Association, and as Secretary of the Law and Society Association. I
was made Chevalier in l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the
French Government, have been awarded the Ludwik and Estelle
Jus Memorial Human Rights Prize and the University of
Toronto's Global Educator Award, the Jeanette Wright award for Graduate Student Mentorship, and have been
Scholar-in-Residence for Holocaust Education Week.