Alexander McClelland

Assistant Professor

• Ph.D., Department of Humanities, Interdisciplinary Centre on Culture and Society, Concordia University; Masters of Environmental Studies, York University
• DT 1714 Dunton Tower, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6
• Email Alexander McClelland
• 613-520-2600 ext. 3353

• View Website
• Go to ORCID Website

Research Interests:

• Critical social science
• Violence
• Surveillance
• Criminalization
• Anarchism
• Qualitative research
• Research ethics
• Critical public health
• Public criminology

Select Principal Investigator funding:

• CIHR Community-Based HIV Team Grant (LOI stage), 2024-2025. Setting Directions for a Community-Based HIV & STBBI Surveillance Observatory.

• SSHRC Insight Grant, 2024-2028. Tracking (In)Justice: Advancing new knowledge on police involved deaths in Canada.

• SSHRC Insight Development Grant, 2022-2024. Experiences of the Social Organization of HIV-Related Public Health Risks.

• CIHR Community-Based HIV Research Catalyst Grant, 2022-2023. Mapping the pathway of blood collected from HIV-positive people in a clinical setting: implications for public health surveillance, consent, and criminalization.

• SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, Carleton University, 2021-2024. Tracking (In)Justice Tracking (In)Justice: a publicly accessible online database of police-involved and carceral deaths across Canada.

• SSHRC Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2019-2020. Confidentiality, anonymity & epistemological exclusion: challenges & strategies for realizing ethical & inclusive research.  

Book:

A. McClelland. (2024). Criminalized Lives: HIV and Legal Violence. Rutgers University Press.

Winner POZ Awards, Best in Literature 2024, POZ Magazine

“An unforgettable chronicle” – Literary Review of Canada

Canada has been known as hot spot for HIV criminalization where the act of not disclosing one’s HIV-positive status to sex partners has historically been regarded as a serious criminal offence. Criminalized Lives describes how this approach has disproportionately harmed the poor, Black and Indigenous people, gay men, and women. In this book, people who have been criminally accused of not disclosing their HIV-positive status, detail the many complexities of disclosure, and the violence that results from being criminalized. 

Accompanied by portraits from queer comic artist Eric Kostiuk Williams, and a foreword from leading activist Robert Suttle, the book examines whether the criminal legal system is really prepared to handle the nuances and ethical dilemmas faced everyday by people living with HIV. By offering personal stories of people who have faced criminalization first-hand, McClelland questions common assumptions about HIV, the role of punishment, and the violence that results from the criminal legal system’s legacy of categorizing people as either victims or perpetrators. 

Select refereed journal articles:

A. McClelland, J. Brophy, A. King, M. Owino, A. Wah, R. Peck. (2024). Action needed to address molecular HIV surveillance ethical concerns. Canadian Journal of Public Health.

C. Hastings, M. French, A. McClelland, et al. (2023). Criminal Code reform of HIV non-disclosure is urgently needed: Social science perspectives on the harms of HIV criminalization in Canada. Canadian Journal of Public Health.

S. Molldrem, A. K.J Smith, A. McClelland. (2022). Predictive analytics in HIV surveillance require new approaches to data ethics, rights, and regulation in public health. Critical Public Health.  

T. Hoppe, A. McClelland, K. Pass. (2022).Beyond criminalization: reconsidering HIV criminalization in an era of reform. Current Opinion on HIV and AIDS.

A. McClelland & C. Bruckert. (2021).Ethics and Confidentiality: Reflections and Lessons Learned Post-Parent and Bruckert v R and Magnotta. Journal of Law and Society.

M. Molldrem, M. Hussain, A. McClelland. (2021). Alternatives to sharing COVID-19 data with law enforcement: recommendations for stakeholders. Health Policy.

A. McClelland & A. Luscombe. (2021). Policing the Pandemic: Counter-mapping Policing Responses to COVID-19 across Canada. The Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research.

E.J. Bernard, A. McClelland, B. Cardell, C. Chung, M. Castro-Bojorquez, M. French, D. Hursey, N. Khanna, B. Minalga, A. Spieldenner, S. Strub. (2020).We are people, not clusters! American Journal of Bioethics.

A. McClelland. (2019). “Lock This Whore Up”: Legal violence and flows of information precipitating personal violence against people criminalized for HIV-related crimes in Canada. In M. French & L. Letourneau (Eds.), Special issue on Big Data and Risk Regulation, European Journal of Risk Regulation.

A. McClelland, A. Guta & M. Gagnon. (2019). The rise of Molecular Surveillance: ethical, criminalization & rights implications. Critical Public Health.

Select refereed book chapters:

A. McClelland. (2022). Histories of living in a negative relation to the law: resistance under regimes of criminalization. In E. van der Meulen, J. Monaghan, and K. Fritsch (Eds.), Disability Injustice: Examining Criminalization in Canada. 1-24. University of British Columbia Press.

A. McClelland. (2021). Old Testament. In M.B. Syacmore (Ed.), Between certain death and a possible future: queer writing on growing up with the AIDS crisis. 150-160. Arsenal Pulp Press.

A. McClelland & Z. Dodd. (2021). Thoughts on an Anarchist Response to Hepatitis C and HIV. In Z. Sharman, The Care We Dream Of: liberatory and transformative approaches to LGBTQ+ health. 119-134. Arsenal Pulp Press.

A. McClelland. (2020). We Can’t Police Our Way out of a Pandemic. In, Sick of the System Why the COVID-19 recovery must be revolutionary. Between the Lines.

Courses:

CRCJ 2200: Contemporary Issues in Criminology

CRCJ 3110: Policing & Public Health

CRCJ 4001: Anarchism and Abolition