A New Year

Dear colleagues and students,

It is my pleasure, as your new (acting) department Chair, to welcome you to the new academic year. Karen Kobayashi, as Associate Chair, and I are looking forward to engaging with and supporting you throughout the year in our classes, seminars and department gatherings.

It is also my pleasure to introduce our newest faculty member, Tamara Humphrey. Tamara’s academic and research interests centre on a range of issues concerning crime, with a broad focus on the causes and consequences of violence. Please join me in welcoming her to our department.

I am proud of our department’s accomplishments over the past year. Our seminar series included talks by speakers such as Dorothy Smith, Rachel Phillips, George Pavlich and Alisa Grigorovich on topics ranging from institutional ethnography, stigma in sex work, colonial criminalization, and sexuality and dementia. I hope you will participate in our upcoming department seminars. Look for our new schedule of talks that will be distributed soon.

We continue to support and advance diversity and inclusivity in our academic programs. At the undergraduate level, our courses address critical issues concerning race, colonialism, gender, sexuality, Indigeneity, and class inequality. Our graduate level courses were redesigned last year to focus on current issues and to expose students to the latest research that includes feminist, Indigenous, ecological, and transgender perspectives. Karen and I are committed to continuing to work with faculty and students to create courses that are inclusive and challenging.

I hope you have a great start to the new term. My door is always open, so don’t hesitate to share any ideas or concerns with myself or Karen.

Best wishes,

Steve.

Dr. Steve Garlick
Associate Professor & Acting Chair
Department of Sociology
University of Victoria
PO Box 3050 STN CSC
Victoria BC V8W3P5