Liam Kennedy

Dr. Liam Kennedy serves as Department Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario. His research examines social inequalities in criminal justice systems and sporting contexts, focusing on how crime, deviance, and punishment reproduce power structures and exclusionary practices. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto (2015), alongside prior degrees from Toronto (M.A., 2009) and York University (B.A., 2008).

His teaching portfolio includes courses on corrections, criminological theory, and crime’s intersection with popular culture. Research interests span media representations of crime, criminological theory, and critical sports criminology, with a focus on governance strategies, surveillance, and biosocial frameworks.

Recent scholarship highlights themes like pandemic-era leisure restrictions, digital surveillance technologies, and violence in professional sports. His work critiques punitive logics in sport governance and examines how institutions construct crises like illicit drug epidemics. Notable contributions include analyses of Canadian national identity through hockey tragedies and the historical memory of slavery in carceral systems.

Kennedy has published extensively in journals like Surveillance and Society, Punishment & Society, and Theoretical Criminology. His research often bridges sociological and criminological perspectives to interrogate systemic inequities in governance and cultural narratives.