Faculty of Arts

Department of Sociology and Criminology

The Department of Sociology and Criminology is one of the largest departments in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Manitoba. In addition to core areas of theory and methods, the Department’s specialties include: sociological theory; research methods; power, inequality and social justice; wellness, illness, disability and medicine; criminology and sociolegal studies; culture, identity and belonging.

Our faculty and staff
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Study with us

Diverse learning opportunities

Social behaviour cannot be fully understood simply by studying the individuals involved. Instead, it requires attention to the wider social contexts in which those individuals are located. Sociology makes the connections between individuals and public or social issues.

In criminology, students undertake a systematic study of the nature and extent of crime and explanations put forward to understand it, as well as close scrutiny of the laws and practices designed to respond to crime. Students will gain a better appreciation of the social dimensions of harmful behaviour and engage in critical exploration of the causes of crime and the possibility of its prevention.

Prestigious practicum opportunity

Gain valuable experience and training in field research through a placement in a criminal justice or other social service agency having a mandate relevant to the study of sociology.

Practicum in Criminological/Sociological Research (SOC 3100)

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News and events

  • Book Launch: Red Flags: A Reckoning with Communism for the Future of the Left

    By David Camfield, Professor of Labour Studies and Sociology

    Saturday, May 3, 2025
    7:00 p.m.
    McNally Robinson Booksellers Grant Park, 4000-1120 Grant Ave. or online via YouTube

    Red Flags (Fernwood Publishing) is an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian introduction to the history of the USSR, China, and Cuba that asks: Were they actually on the road to communism? Red Flags traces the path from the 1917 Russian Revolution to the construction of the world’s first "actually existing socialism" society: the USSR. It also looks at the post-revolution societies created along the same lines in China and Cuba. Using the intellectual tools of historical materialism, Red Flags argues that they were not in fact moving towards communism because the social relations remained fixed in class exploitation. The workers were never liberated. This book offers an analysis of the contradictions and uneasy truths the left needs to confront if it is to build a genuinely liberatory alternative to capitalism.

    Featuring special guests Tami Gadir and Andrew Loewen.

  • A man holding a book in front of his stomach, smiling at the camera.

 

  • NEW Dr. Lawrence F. Douglas Fellowship for graduate students

    The late professor Lawrence F. Douglas accepted a position in the department of sociology at the University of Manitoba in 1967. He was the first Black faculty member in the department and one of its four founding members. He taught there for 22 years until his retirement in 1989. His daughter, Delia Douglas has established the fellowship to pay tribute to my father’s legacy and to acknowledge his simultaneously unique and familiar biography which is linked to the Caribbean’s history of colonialism, village life, and the complex journeying that defines Black life in the diaspora.

    This fellowship will be awarded for the first time during the upcoming 2024-25 academic year.

    Read more about the Douglas family in UM Today

    Make a donation to the scholarship (choose: enter a fund name)

  • A woman in university graduation gowns stands with a man holding a camera.

    Delia Douglas at her PhD graduation with her father, Lawrence Fitzroy Douglas.

 

  • Celebrating milestones!

    The Department of Sociology and Criminology is celebrating two important milestones. 2023 - 2024 marks 100 years of sociology courses being taught at UM. It is also the 60th anniversary of our MA program in sociology. 

    Do you have a photo or story to share from your time in sociology at UM? Send it to sociology@umanitoba.ca to be added to our archives and potentially included in an anthology before the end of the year. Be sure to provide a credit on any photos, list the names of the people in the photos and provide any background you can on the year the photo was taken and what is happening in the photo.

     

    Photo: Faculty members Rick Linden, G.N. Ramu, Gregg Olsen, Charles Axelrod, Rod Kueneman, Elizabeth Comack and Russell Smandych circa mid-1990's.

  • Group of seven adults sitting around a lunch table looking at the camera.

 

Lori Wilkinson standing outside in front of greenery on the University of Manitoba Fort Gary campus.

Dr. Lori Wilkinson named Canada Research Chair

Congratulations to Dr. Lori Wilkinson on her 2022 appointment as a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Migration Futures supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. 

Dr. Wilkinson’s research as a public sociologist is profoundly integrated with the communities with which she works, and her results have demonstrable, significant impact both within the academy and far beyond. As a founder of Immigration Research West, she has undertaken significant research on the settlement experiences of immigrants and refugees. Some of these findings have been used to change national immigration policies, inform governments internationally, and most importantly, has helped introduce new programming in the immigration community.

Programs of study

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Bachelor of Arts in Criminology

Earn an undergraduate general or Honours degree in criminology. Attention is given to gender, race, class and crime, youth and crime, violence and victimization, criminal law and procedure, policing and crime prevention, restorative justice and global criminology. Courses are taught primarily from a sociological perspective, with emphasis placed on research, program development and policy analysis.

Student resources and opportunities

Sociology and Criminology honours program testimonial videos

Watch the testimonial videos from our former students to learn more about the Sociology and Criminology honours programs.
 

Sociology and Criminology professional associations

  • Sociology and Criminology student advising

    Undergraduate Student Advisor

    Dr. Sonia Bookman
    Associate Professor
    sonia.bookman@umanitoba.ca 

    Please provide detailed information including your full name, UM student number as well as how to contact you.

    Advisors can provide useful advice and information about the academic program, information about course selections, preparing for and being accepted into graduate programs, careers in sociology and criminology and related fields or obtaining special permission to enter courses if you do not have the prerequisite(s).

    Advisors in the Department of Sociology and Criminology ONLY provide guidance on discipline specific courses. They CANNOT offer advice on degree requirements outside of sociology and criminology courses. Please contact the Academic Advisors in the Faculty of Arts if you require assistance with degree requirements (e.g., math, writing, science and humanities credits as well as 6-credit hours in 5 different subject fields) ancillary options (i.e., credits outside of your major/minor) and GPA requirements.

You may also want

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Become a graduate student in Sociology at UM

Together, the students, faculty and staff of the Department of Sociology and Criminology have developed an outstanding learning and research environment.

Once you decide on an area of specialization for graduate studies, please review our faculty members and their research interests to see who works in this area. Applicants are required to list two potential supervisors when applying.

Learn more about being a sociology graduate student at UM 

Research

Sociologists and criminologists engage in a variety of community-based, local, national and international projects, presenting diverse opportunities for student research involvement.

  • Dying at Home

    Dr. Laura Funk

    Understanding the complexity of preferences for place of death and family involvement in end of life (EOL) care is especially urgent following decades of changes in Canadian health and social policies, funding and service delivery, which have increased structural pressures towards aging and dying in place.

    This study examines and compares public attitudes and policy on dying at home and responsibility for supporting home death.

    More about the research project

  • Democratizing data: Canadian Immigration Research Portal

    Dr. Lori Wilkinson
    Canada Research Chair in Migration Futures

    This new interactive map provides statistical demographic data to policy analysts, researchers, NGO workers, students and the public across Canada helping to inform discussions, support grant requests and direct programming among local partnerships, the settlement sector, government, business, and ethnocultural, Indigenous and newcomer communities.

    More about the Canadian Immigration Research Portal

  • Why Food Sovereignty Matters

    Dr. Annette Desmarais

    What is food sovereignty? What is it that makes it such a powerful idea? What is the significance of this new vision of agriculture and food? How do communities actually engage in it?

    More about the research

Community and outreach

Members of the Department of Sociology and Criminology have affiliations with other research institutes, centres, facilities and groups, including:

Contact us

Department of Sociology and Criminology
318 Isbister Building
183 Dafoe Road
University of Manitoba (Fort Garry campus)
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2 Canada

sociology@umanitoba.ca
204-474-9260
Toll Free: 1-800-432-1960 Ext. 9260
204-261-1216