Gillian Balfour

I completed my PhD at the University of Manitoba where I examined the role of lawyers in the criminalization of men and women accused of violent crimes. I looked at how the practice of law is a social act that is constrained and enabled by socio-political interests of "law and order", professional codes of conduct and how identities of victims and offenders and the meaning of violence are encoded with stereotypes of whiteness, Indianness, dangerousness, poverty, heterosexuality, femininity and masculinity. I am particularly interested in law reforms in the areas of domestic and sexual violence, and Aboriginal peoples in the criminal justice system. I love sociology because of the people who I meet and books I get to read. Sociology is political but poignant in that we get to see the world through the eyes of others and understand ourselves a bit better as a result.