The annual John Ll. J. Edwards Memorial Lecture honours and celebrates the late John Llewellyn Jones Edwards, professor at the Faculty of Law and founder of the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies (CrimSL). Edwards was an English-trained legal scholar who taught at Dalhousie University before joining U of T Law. In 1963, he established the Centre for Criminology as a world-renowned multidisciplinary research centre which has grown to offer undergraduate, master's and PhD programs in criminology and sociolegal studies.
Previous Edwards Lectures
Twenty-Fifth Annual Lecture
What to Make Of (Border) Violence
- Professor Mary Bosworth, University of Oxford
- Thursday, November 2, 2023 at 4:00 pm
- Abstract: In this lecture, Professor Mary Bosworth will draw on material from a long-term, mixed-methods research project with staff in the UK deportation and short-term immigration detention system, to reflect on how criminologists and socio-legal scholars conceptualise, study, and understand institutional(ised) violence.
Twenty-Fourth Annual Lecture
Family Policing and the Carceral Web: A Call for Abolition
- Professor Dorothy Roberts (University of Pennsylvania)
- Thursday, January 19, 2023 at 4:00 pm
- Abstract: In Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World, acclaimed legal and social science scholar Dorothy Roberts draws on decades of research and activism to expose the foundational racism of the child welfare system.
- The Racist Dimensions of Family Policing and Child Protection Law: A Case for Abolition? | A recap of the 24th Annual John LL. J. Edwards Memorial Lecture.
Twenty-Third Annual Lecture
Prisms of Justice: Indigenous Legal Perspectives
- Professor Val Napoleon (University of Victoria)
- Friday, February 11, 2022 | 12:00pm to 1:30pm
- Abstract: When we hear the term justice employed, we of course apply our own expectations and definitions wrought through our own grids of intelligibility and experience. Justice and all that the concept encompasses form the aspirations that people hold for law and this includes Indigenous law. This is the way I want to take up the conversation about justice – from an Indigenous legal perspective and from within an Indigenous legal perspective. In other words, how is justice an aspiration of Indigenous law whether dealing with harms and injuries, conflicts, lands and water, gender, human rights, and so on?
- The lecture was presented by the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies and co-sponsored by the Centre for Indigenous Studies, and Woodsworth College, University of Toronto.
Twenty-Second Annual Lecture
Post-Pandemic Scenarios: A view from the perspective of the epistemologies of the South
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Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos (University of Coimbra)
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Wednesday, February 10, 2021 12:00 pm to 2:00 pm
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Abstract: I have been arguing in favor of the epistemologies of the south, a new epistemological paradigm aiming at bringing about global cognitive justice (lastly, The End of Cognitive Empire, Duke University Press 2018). In light of this epistemological stance, I identify and evaluate three possible scenarios in the period of intermittent pandemic we are entering now.
Twenty-First Annual Lecture
The Sexual Politics of Anti-Trafficking Discourse
- Speaker: Professor Prabha Kotiswaran
- Thursday, November 28, 2019, 5-6:30 pm
Twentieth Annual Lecture
The Accidental Jurist: Thoughts on a life in the law
Monday, November 19, 2018, 5:00-6:30 pm
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Speaker: Senator Murray Sinclair
Nineteenth Annual Lecture
The arcs of mass incarceration: Four turning points in the history of U.S. penality and their legacy for the contemporary penal state
Thursday, October 26, 2017
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Lecturer: Jonathan Simon, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley
Eighteenth Annual Lecture
Friday April 8, 2016
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Lecturer: Marie Gottschalk, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania
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Topic: Are we there yet? The future of penal reform and the carceral state in the US.
Seventeenth Annual Lecture: March 26th, 2015
- Lecturer: The Honourable Professor Irwin Cotler
- Topic: The Omnibus Criminal (In) Justice Agenda: Whither Parliament, the Courts and the Charter
Sixteenth Annual Lecture: February 6, 2014
- Lecturer: Professor Emeritus Anthony Doob, University of Toronto
- Topic: “Losing our balance: Old and New Directions in Canadian Criminal Justice Policy”
Fifteenth Annual Lecture: November 20, 2012
- Lecturer: The Hon. Justice Ian Binnie
- Topic: “Taking Wrongful Convictions Seriously”
Fourteenth Annual Lecture: September 20, 2011
- Lecturer: Lucia Zedner, Oxford University
- Topic: “The Historical Origins of the Preventive State – or just how new is the new penology”
Thirteenth Annual Lecture: January 17, 2011
- Lecturer: Federico Varese, Oxford University
- Topic: “Current Challenges in the Study of Organized Crime”
Twelfth Annual Lecture: January 25, 2010
- Lecturer: Natalie Zemon Davis, Princeton University and University of Toronto
- Topic: “Judges, Masters, Diviners: Slaves’ Experience of Criminal Justice in Colonial Suriname”
Eleventh Annual Lecture: November 27, 2008
- Lecturer: Loïc Wacquant, University of California, Berkeley, and Centre de sociologie européene, Paris
- Topic: “Reconstructing the Penal State”
Tenth Annual Lecture: October 17, 2006
- Lecturer: Susan Silbey, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Topic: “Governing Green Laboratories: Trust and Surveillance in the Cultures of Science”
Ninth Annual Lecture: March 3, 2005
- Lecturer: Professor Richard Ericson, Professor of Criminology, University of Toronto
- Topic: “Criminalization and the Politics of Uncertainty”
Eighth Annual Lecture: October 22, 2003
- Lecturer: Professor Martin Friedland, University Professor Emeritus of Law and Criminology, University of Toronto
- Topic: “Criminal Justice in Canada Revisited”
Seventh Annual Lecture: March 6, 2002
- Lecturer: Professor David Garland, New York University
- Topic: “The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society”
Sixth Annual Lecture: March 27, 2001
- Lecturer: Professor James Fyfe, Crime and Justice Research Institute, Temple University
- Topic: “Police Officers Involved in Career-Ending Misconduct”
Fifth Annual Lecture: March 23, 2000
- Lecturer: Professor John Beattie, University of Toronto
- Topic: “The Problem of Urban Crime: London 1660-1750”
Fourth Annual Lecture: February 25, 1999
- Lecturer: Professor Kent Roach, University of Saskatchewan
- Topic: “The Attorney-General and the Charter”
Third Annual Lecture: December 3, 1997
- Lecturer: Professor Janet Chan, University of New South Wales
- Topic: “Policing Accounts: The New Accountability and Cultural Resistance”
Second Annual Lecture: November 13, 1996
- Lecturer: Professor Pat O’Malley, La Trobe University, Australia
- Topic: “Criminology and the New Liberalism”
Inaugural Lecture: November 1, 1995
- Lecturer: Professor Andrew Ashworth, King’s College, University of London, England
- Topic: “Mens Rea and Statutory Offences”