Jeffrey Monaghan

Associate Professor/ Undergraduate Supervisor

• Ph.D. (Sociology), Queen’s University
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Research Interests

• Security governance
• Policing
• Surveillance of social movements
• Settler colonial studies
• Social movements studies
• Globalization of surveillance and security practices

About

Jeffrey Monaghan is an Associate Professor at Carleton’s Institute for Criminology and Criminal Justice (ICCJ). He has a PhD in Sociology from Queen’s University and serves on the Editorial Board of the interdisciplinary journal Criminological Encounters.

Jeff’s primary research interests examine how policing and surveillance practices intersect with systemic patterns of criminalization, social inequality, and colonial and racial social structures. Current research projects include:

1. Protest policing & the policing and surveillance of social movements;
2. Policing practices associated with national security, counter-terrorism, counter-radicalization;
3. Police culture and police violence;
4. Discretionary criminalization practices.

Jeff teaches three undergraduate courses at the ICCJ: Criminological theories (CRCJ 2100); Policing (in) security (CRCJ 3100), and The art of (in)justice (CRCJ 4500).

For graduate student supervision/committees, Jeff is cross-appointed to the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the School of Canadian and Indigenous Studies.

Books

Disability Injustice: Confronting Criminalization in Canada (2022)
Edited by Kelly Fritsch, Jeffrey Monaghan, and Emily van der Meulen

Disability Injustice is an edited collection that brings together highly original work by a range of scholars and activists to explore disability in the historical and contemporary Canadian criminal justice system. The contributors confront challenging topics such as eugenics and crime control; the pathologizing of difference as deviance within criminal law systems; processes of criminalization based on discretionary, biased approaches to physical and mental health; and the role of disability justice activism in contesting longstanding discrimination and exclusion. Weaving together disability and sociolegal studies, criminology, and law, they examine disability in relation to various agencies and aspects of the criminal justice system. Policing and surveillance, sentencing and the courts, prisons and other carceral spaces, and alternatives to confinement are among the areas of focus.

Policing Indigenous Movements: Dissent and the Security State (2018)
With Andrew Crosby

In recent years, Indigenous peoples have lead a number of high profile movements fighting for social and environmental justice in Canada. In response, policing and other security agencies have developed a prolific surveillance regime that targets Indigenous movements as national security threats. Policing Indigenous Movements traces the colonial legacies of these practices, showing how the extensive policing of Indigenous peoples or groups in the “war on terror” has been rationalized by the development of categories and labels such as “Aboriginal extremism” and “critical infrastructure” specifically to criminalize Indigenous movements that challenge extractive development, demand self-determination, or contest federal and provincial claims to Indigenous lands.

Through an examination of four prominent movements — the long-standing conflict involving the Algonquins of Barriere Lake, the struggle against the Northern Gateway Pipeline, the Idle No More movement and the anti-fracking protests surrounding the Elsipogtog First Nation — this book raises critical questions regarding the expansion of the security apparatus, the normalization of police surveillance targeting social movements, the relationship between police and energy corporations, the criminalization of dissent and threats to civil liberties and collective action in an era of hyper surveillance.

Protests in the Information Age: Social Movements, Digital Practices and Surveillance (2018)
Edited with Lucas Melgaço, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Information and communication technologies have transformed the dynamics of contention in contemporary society. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and devices such as smartphones have increasingly played a central role in facilitating and mobilizing social movements throughout different parts of the world. Concurrently, the same technologies have been taken up by public authorities (including security agencies and the police) and have been used as surveillance tools to monitor and suppress the activities of certain demonstrators. This book explores the complex and contradictory relationships between communication and information technologies and social movements by drawing on different case studies from around the world.

Security Aid: Canada and the Development Regime of Security (2017)

Canada is actively involved through various agencies in the domestic affairs of countries in the Global South. Over time, these practices – rationalized as a form of humanitarian assistance − have become increasingly focused on enhancing regimes of surveillance, policing, prisons, border control, and security governance.

Drawing on an array of previously classified materials and interviews with security experts, Security Aid presents a critical analysis of the securitization of humanitarian aid. Jeffrey Monaghan demonstrates that, while Canadian humanitarian assistance may be framed around altruistic ideals, these ideals are subordinate to two overlapping objectives: the advancement of Canada’s strategic interests and the development of security states in the “underdeveloped” world. Through case studies of the major aid programs in Haiti, Libya, and Southeast Asia, Security Aid provides a comprehensive analysis and reinterpretation of Canada’s foreign policy agenda and its role in global affairs.

Recent Publications