Photo of Alexander McClelland

Alexander McClelland

Assistant Professor

Degrees:Ph.D., Department of Humanities, Interdisciplinary Centre on Culture and Society, Concordia University; Masters of Environmental Studies, York University
Email:Alexander.McClelland@carleton.ca
Office:DT 1714 Dunton Tower
Website:Browse
Twitter:Follow

Research Interests

  • Critical criminology and critical social science
  • Violence, structural violence, legal and extra-legal violence
  • Surveillance studies and medico-legal surveillance
  • Criminalization
  • Policing
  • Anarchism
  • Qualitative research and Institutional Ethnography
  • Confidentiality, privacy, and data protection
  • Critical and counter public health
  • Law, sexuality, and communicable diseases
  • Settler colonialism and early 20th century public health legislation

I am an interdisciplinary sociolegal researcher who focused on the intersections of life, law, and disease.

In 2019, I was awarded a SSHRC Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship project with Dr. Chris Bruckert, University of Ottawa, entitled Confidentiality, anonymity & epistemological exclusion: challenges & strategies for realizing ethical & inclusive research, which has been examining the importance of promises of confidentiality within qualitative research projects focused on criminalized and socially sanctioned issues. The project is ongoing, learn more here.

I have regularly engaged with the Federal and Ontario provincial governments in relation to my work on the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure. In 2019, I presented findings from my doctoral research as an expert witness to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights for their study on the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure. In 2018, I was invited to present to the policy roundtable on HIV criminalization reform with the Ontario Ministry of Justice and Attorney General and the Ontario Minister on the Status of Women. In 2017, I was engaged in a consultation on HIV criminalization legal reform with the Department of Justice Canada.

I am involved currently as a collaborator in a number of funded projects, including:

  • University of Ottawa, Knowledge Mobilization Award, Policing the Pandemic Mapping Project. With collaborator: Alex Luscombe, University of Toronto.
  • SSHRC Insight Development Grant: Understanding Race and Punishment in HIV Criminalization. Principal Investigator: Eli Manning, Dalhousie University. Co-applicants: Ciann Wilson, Wilfrid Laurier University, Margaret Kisikaw Piyesis, All Nations Hope; Richard Elliott, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network; Emily Snyder, University of Saskatoon; LLana James, Independent researcher.
  • SSHRC Connection Grant: Advancing Research Integrity in HIV Social Science Research. Principal Applicant: Carol Strike, University of Toronto; Co-applicants: Ciann Wilson, Wilfrid Laurier University; Angela Kaida, Simon Fraser University; Adrian Guta; Marilou Gagnon, University of Victoria.
  • CIHR Planning & Dissemination Grant: Exploring the intersections of HIV treatment interventions and the ongoing criminalization of HIV in Canada: Setting a new research and practice agenda. Principle Applicant: Adrian Guta, University of Windsor. Co-applicants: Michael Orsini, University of Ottawa; Eli Manning, Dalhousie University; Marilou Gagnon, University of Victoria; Richard Elliot, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.

Select Refereed Publications

Alexander McClelland. (2020). Sexual autonomy & resistance under regimes of criminalization. In E. van der Meulen, J. Monaghan, and K. Fritsch (Eds.), Disability (in)justice: Examining criminalization in Canada. University of British Columbia Press. Forthcoming.
Alexander 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.
Alexander McClelland. (2019). “Lock This Whore Up”: Legal violence and flows of information precipitating personal violence against people criminalised for HIV-related crimes in Canada. European Journal of Risk Regulation.
Alexander McClelland, Adrian Guta & Marilou Gagnon (2019) The rise of molecular HIV surveillance: implications on consent and criminalization, Critical Public Health.
Alexander McClelland, Adrian Guta & Nicole Greenspan. (2018). Governing participation: A critical analysis of international and Canadian texts promoting the Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV & AIDS. In S. Hindmarch, M. Orsini & M. Gagnon (Eds.), Seeing red: HIV/AIDS and public policy in Canada. University of Toronto Press.
Alexander McClelland & Zoë Dodd. (2016). Thoughts on an anarchist response to Hepatitis C and HIV. Perspectives journal on anarchist theory, Anarcha-Feminisms. Institute for Anarchist Theory.
Alexander McClelland & Jessica Whitbread. (2016). PosterVirus: Claiming sexual autonomy for people with HIV through collective action. In M. Orsini & C. Kelly (Eds.), Mobilizing metaphor: Art, culture and disability activism in Canada. University of British Columbia Press.

Select Public-Facing Publications

Abby Deshman, Alexander McClelland, Alex Luscombe, (2020). Stay off the grass: COVID-19 and law enforcement in Canada. Canadian Civil Liberties Association & the Policing the Pandemic Mapping Project.
Alex Luscombe & Alexander McClelland. (2020). Tickets and fines unlikely to help in battle against COVID-19, Montreal Gazette.
Alex Luscombe & Alexander McClelland. (2020). Policing the Pandemic Mapping Project: Tracking the policing of COVID-19 across Canada, white paper.
Alexander McClelland. (2020). We can’t police our way out of the pandemic, NOW Magazine.
Alexander McClelland. (2019). The criminalization of HIV in Canada: Experiences of people living with HIV. Funded by CIHR.
Alexander McClelland. (2019). Unprepared: Is PrEP, the drug that prevents HIV, bringing revolution or regression? Maisonneuve.
Alexander McClelland & Gillian Kolla. (2017). Research participants should have right to confidentiality, Montreal Gazette.
Alexander McClelland. (2017).  Toronto police’s long history of stigmatizing people with HIV, NOW Magazine.

Course

CRCJ 2200: Contemporary Issues in Criminology