Kevin Walby
Title: Associate Professor
Phone: 204.786.9105
Office: 3C38
Building: Centennial Hall
Email: k.walby@uwinnipeg.ca
Degrees:
PhD Carleton
Biography:
Kevin Walby is an Associate Professor and Chancellor's Research Chair (2015-2018) in the Department of Criminal Justice at University of Winnipeg. He completed his doctoral dissertation at Carleton University (2005–2010). His dissertation research was awarded the Governor General’s Medal. Prior to joining the Department of Criminal Justice in 2013, Walby was Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at University of Victoria, a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, Centre of Criminology, and a lecturer at the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Carleton University. He is the book review editor for Surveillance & Society as well as Security Journal. He is the co-editor for the peer reviewed Journal of Prisoners on Prisons (JPP), published by University of Ottawa Press. For the website, see: http://www.jpp.org
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) have funded his research. Walby’s research interests fall into five areas.
On the topic of (1) policing, security, surveillance, with Randy K. Lippert Walby is working on a SSHRC Insight Development project regarding corporate security and a 5-year SSHRC Insight Grant project on paid duty policing and private sponsorship of public police. With Randy Lippert he is co-editor of Policing Cities: Urban Securitization and Regulation in a 21st Century World (Routledge, 2013) and Corporate Security in the 21st Century: Theory and Practice in International Perspective (Palgrave, 2014). He is co-author with R.K. Lippert of Municipal Corporate Security in International Context (2015, Routledge). Lippert, Walby, I. Warren and D. Palmer are also editors of National Security, Surveillance, and Terror: Canada and Australia in Comparative Perspective (Palgrave, 2017). Walby is also conducting research on conservation officer policing, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) security intelligence work, and public video surveillance. His articles on policing, security, and surveillance appear in Antipode, Alternatives, British Journal of Criminology, Labor History, Security Dialogue, Policing and Society, Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, Current Issues in Criminal Justice, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Law & Social Inquiry, Social & Legal Studies, Crime, Law & Social Change, Law, Culture and the Humanities, Surveillance and Society, Media, Culture, and Society, Security Journal, Sociology, Current Sociology, International Sociology, Social Movement Studies, Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Canadian Journal of Law and Society, Canadian Journal of Sociology, Canadian Review of Sociology, Canadian Journal of Communication, Law & Policy and more.
Walby’s research on (2) representations of crime and criminality has two components. The first component involves theorizing the late 19th-century rise and early 21st-century resurgence of biological theories of crime. These articles appearing in Criminology & Criminal Justice and The Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology concern bio-criminological claims about the etiology of ‘criminal man’. The main component examines representations of crime and punishment in prison, jail, police and courthouse museums. His articles in the British Journal of Criminology, Theoretical Criminology, Crime, Media, Culture, Critical Criminology, Contemporary Justice Review, Tourist Studies, Qualitative Inquiry, and Punishment & Society focus on representations of criminality, penal museums, and prison tours (also see the co-edited special section of the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons concerning prison tours). With Justin Piché, J. Wilson and S. Hodgkinson he is editor of the Handbook of Prison Tourism (Palgrave, 2017). With Justin Piché, he is working on a 5-year SSHRC Insight Grant project that examines prison, jail, police and court museums. For the website, see: http://www.carceralcultures.ca
Dr. Walby is also part of the Walls to Bridges Collective at the University of Winnipeg. For the website, see https://www.uwinnipeg.ca/walls-to-bridges/index.html
On the topic of (3) access to information and freedom of information law, Walby’s research on Canadian access to information (ATI) and freedom of information (FOI) legislation has two components. First, Walby uses interviews and ATI/FOI requests to investigate the application of Canadian federal and provincial ATI/FOI legislation. He has edited a volume on ATI/FOI, law, and qualitative research methods entitled Brokering Access: Power, Politics and Freedom of Information Process in Canada (with University of British Columbia Press). He has co-edited with J. Brownlee Access to Information and Social Justice: Critical Research Strategies for Journalists, Scholars, and Activists (2015, Arbeiter Ring Publishing (ARP) Books). Articles have been published in Policing Practice & Research, Research Ethics, Government Information Quarterly, Canadian Journal of Law and Society and Qualitative Inquiry. Second, Walby uses ATI/FOI requests to examine information management in criminal justice institutions as well as policy transfer between local police and national security agencies.
On the topic of (4) sex work, sexuality, and emotional labour, Walby is author of Touching Encounters: Sex, Work, and Male-for-Male Internet Escorting (University of Chicago Press, 2012). Drawing on interviews with male escorts from Montréal, Toronto, Ottawa, New York (USA) and London (UK), Touching Encounters explores labeling, stigma, and male escort relationships with clients. Walby draws from Blumer and Goffman to provide a more comprehensive interactionist account of sex and sexualities. Findings from this research appear in Qualitative Research. A chapter is forthcoming in an Italian edited collection on sexual scripting theory. Walby is also co-editor of Emotions Matter: a Relational Approach to Emotions with D. Spencer and A. Hunt (University of Toronto Press, 2012).
He also has a long-standing interest in (5) urban studies. He has published in Urban Studies, Cultural Studies, Topia, as well as in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. His SSHRC Insight Development project “Collective Trauma and Municipal Policymaking in Post-Industrial War Towns: Nitro, Mercury, and Uranium City” examines what happens to purpose-built towns and the people who live there when industries withdraw, leaving behind economic strain and environmental contamination.
Walby is keen to serve on supervisory committees for graduate and honours student research in the following areas: public policing; private security; corporate security; surveillance; risk; imprisonment and punishment; critical criminology; socio-legal studies; access to information and freedom of information law; social justice; access to justice; urban studies; public culture; qualitative research strategies, including institutional ethnography and narrative analysis.
For more information about publications and projects, please go to: http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~kwalby