York University Associate Professor Allyson Lunny will hold the prestigious Endowed Chair in Criminology & Criminal Justice at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B. during the Fall 2021 term. The Endowed Chair appointment is awarded annually to a scholar with a well-established record of research and who has a PhD in Criminology or a related field.
Lunny, an associate professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS), teaches in the Law & Society program and is a member of the graduate program in Socio-Legal Studies.
Her book Debating Hate Crime: Language, Legislatures and the Law in Canada (UBC Press, 2017), is recognized as a leading work in the field. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, she argues that the parliamentary debates on hate crime and hate speech legislation reveal deeper concerns, trepidations and anxieties about victimization, rightful citizenship, social threat, and moral erosion.
At St. Thomas, she will pivot from this research and will refocus on mass killings of women in relation to misogynistic hate crime. Analyzing the language of hate, she will probe the relationship of incel ideology in the motives behind the Toronto van attack, the 1989 massacre at École Polytechnique, and the recent mass shooting in Atlanta, Georgia. Her research utilizes semiotics and affect theory to deepen the conversation about hate crime and ideology.
While in residence at St. Thomas, Lunny will deliver the keynote address at a hate crime conference. She will also teach a fourth-year seminar for students interested in her research.